WfJRIlERS ,,IN(;(J,IRIJ

25
No. 310 23 JUly 1982
Defend the Palestinians! Israel Get Out!
Neveu/Gamma-Liaison

elru
u.s.: Bloody Hands Off!
Labor/Black Struggle
in Reagan's America...6
The Israeli Blitzkrieg. Tens of thou-
sands dead and mutilated. Hundreds of
thousands left homeless. Napalm, phos-
phorus bombs, cluster and fragmenta-
tion bombs dropped on refugee camps
and major cities. "We haven't seen
wounds like this before, even in the
Vietnam War," exclaimed a Norwegian
doctor. The actual statistics of the
destruction of Lebanon will take years
to extract from the rubble. from the
bomb shelters in which children are
",""eu. [,ull, t'nt: graves dug
around the ancient and now demolished
cities of Sidon and Tyre. All of the
figures are underestimated because no
one knows. To take just one example. an
American doctor says his hospital
performed hundreds of amputations in
one day, not only because of the
seriousness of the wounds but because it
had run out of drugs. There was no
other way to save the patients'lives than
to sever their limbs.
And now we are watching the slow
strangulation of Beirut. a city once
called "the jewel of the Near East." With
all the refugees of war streaming in from
the south. Beirut may very well now
contain two-thirds the entire population
of Lebanon. The Israeli army has cut off
food. water and electricity to the
Palestinian and Lebanese Muslim
masses in west Beirut. And the cease-
fires arranged daily by U.S. envoy
Philip Habib are used by the Israeli
forces to clean and rearm their artillery
for the next day's bombardment.
The only language to capture what is
happening in Lebanon today is the
language of the Nazi holocaust, the
destruction of whole populations. And
that language is used not only by the
opponents and detractors of Zionism.
but by the Zionists themselves. An
. Israeli armed forces official speaking on
American television talks of a "final
solution" to the PLO "problem."
Behind the Zionist holocaust in
Lebanon stands U.S. imperialism and
now the threat of direct U.S. military
intervention. Reagan has agreed "in
principle" to send American troops to
accept the Palestinian commandos'
surrender, disarm them and take them
away into another exile. That the
Pentagon wlllllrllike C!
In Lebanon is closely related to the fact
that the Syrian army is equipped by the
Soviet Union and that the Soviet border
itself is but a few hundred miles away.
Reagan's proposal to send in the
Marines is another provocation against
the Soviet Union. an attempt to use
these forces as a nuclear tripwire
for U.S. military intervention in the re-
gion. Remember that in 1973 the far
more "rational" and "detente"-minded
Nixon/Kissinger regime went to the
nuclear brink with the USSR during the
October War between Israel and the
Arab states over the issue of sending
"peacekeeping" forces. So the stakes are
very large indeed in the crisis produced
by Israel's genocidal invasion of
Lebanon.
U.S. Marines to Lebanon,
Once Again?
If. in fact. Reagan sends U.S. forces
into Lebanon he will be following in the
footsteps of Eisenhower. The 11.000
Marines who waded ashore Beirut's
beaches in July 1958 were the direct
application in the region of the so-called
Eisenhower Doctrine of "containing
Soviet aggression." After the 1956 Suez
war in which the historic imperialist
masters of the Near East. Britain and
France. were humiliated and defeated.
nationalist and revolutionary currents
swept the region. The most important
revolutionary development occurred in
Iraq where in 1958 an unstable alliance
of nationalist military officers and a
powerful Communist Party, rooted in
the oil workers, overthrew the Hashe-
mite monarchy and so brought an
ignominious end to Washington's
CENTO alliance against the Soviet
Union.
Syria too witnessed the growing
strength of radical-nationalist Ba'athists
and Communists. The formation of the
short-lived United Arab Republic in
1958 between Ba'athist Syria and
1\asserite Egypt had a direct impact on
LCL'uiiull. Par:-''\rab nationa!Jsm deeply
affected the Lebanese Muslim toiiers
who viewed Christian Maronite privi-
lege and domination as a direct out-
growth of the imperialist balkanization
of the 1\ear East. When the Maronite
president Chamoun. the only Arab
leader to openly endorse the Eisenhower
Doctrine. threatened the traditional
communalist agreement by running for
a second term, the clan leaders of the
Muslim population launched a revolt.
To help put down this revolt Chamoun
requested and got the U.S. Marines.
While the Marines were occupying
Beirut. a deal was worked between
Chamoun and the Muslim clan chiefs to
maintain the old feudalistic covenant.
Thus the 1958 Lebanese revolt, though
socially based on the downtrodden
Muslim workers and peasants. ended up
preserving the traditional Maronite-
dominated confessional system.
The purpose of direct U.S. military
intervention was not simply to prop up
the pro-Western Chamoun. That was
the pretext. The real target of the
Eisenhower Doctrine was the Iraqi
revolution. which opened the way to
proletarian power. In fact the Marines
disembarked on Beirut's beaches the
very day after the Hashemite monarchy
was toppled in Baghdad. However. the
Iraqi revolution was not crushed by
U. S. imperialist force; it was betrayed
from within by Stalinism. In order to
buy "peaceful coexistence" with Eisen-
hower's America (an earlier "spirit of
Camp David"). Khrushchev ordered the
Iraqi Communist Party to submit
to fi ..dlna! (":t strong:Ti3 n
who soon drove the Communists
underground.
But neither in 1958 nor since has the
Kremlin's policv of betrayal of revolu-
tion in the Near East pacified U.S.
imperialism. Reagan now openly de-
clares his aim is to forge an anti-Soviet
alliance ("the strategic consensus")
embracing both Zionist Israel and
various Arab regimes. Especially since
the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the U.S. has
used the pressure of Zionist expansion-
ism to undermine Soviet influence in the
region. "Don't cross us or you will face
the Israeli war machine," is Washing-
ton's message to the Arab capitals. A
former Israeli ambassador to the U.S.,
Simcha Dinitz, explained the relation-
ship with the usual bully boy braggado-
cio of his kind:
"Time and time again. we've created
continued on page 3
Another Victim of Cagitalist Reaction
Death of ERA
How Communists Fight
Imperialist War Drive
The Equal Rights Amendment is
dead and the Moral Majority is dancing
on its grave. Over half a century of
campaigns for a simple statement of
equal rights for women as a constitu-
tional amendment ended June 30, when
the extension period for states' ratifica-
tion of the ERA ran out. Although this
token reform would have meant no
fundamental change in the condition of
women in capitalist America, still such
struggles for bourgeois democratic
rights are of profound interest to the
proletariat. Unlike many other left
groups, and without the slightest illu-
sion of confidence in constitutionalism,
the Spartacist League supported the
ERA, understanding that its defeat by a
reactionary mobilization would condi-
tion the entire social climate. As we
wrote in 1978, "On the social level,
opposition to the ERA indicates the
growing power of reactionary ideology
in a period of economic depression.
Thus, defeat of the ERA would be a
more serious blow to women's rights
than its passage would be a victory"
(Women and Revolution, No. 17,
Summer 1978).
Early on, the Moral Majority and
anti-abortionist right wing targeted the
ERA as a test of strength against the lib/
rad feminists, who in turn saw its
passage as the culmination of their
strategy. This petty-bourgeois current,
typified by NOW, recognized legal dis-
crimination against women as the main
obstacle to educational and professional
advancement in capitalist America, thus
turning their backs on the masses of
poor and black women for whom such
"upward mobility" was a cynical fiction.
Nonetheless, the "rollback" of ERA is
part and parcel of a wider rollback
campaign of American imperialism in
crisis. All reforms are on the chopping
block, from abortion rights to food
stamps to school lunches and school
integration. On the order of the day are
escalating race terror, union-busting,
depression-level unemployment. The
core of this reaction is the nuclear
buildup for war against the Soviet
Union to roll back the gains of the
October Revolution.
As with the struggle over busing, the
liberals lined up behind the anti-Soviet
war drive and social reaction, represent-
ing the bourgeois consensus of both
Democratic and Republican parties.
Jimmy Carter was a bridge to Ronald
Reagan. The fight for women's rights,
for defense of black gains and defense of
the unions must be a fight against both
parties of capitalism, and for the
socialist revolution.
In December 1922 a''peace confer-
ence" was called by the social-
democratic Second and Two-and-a-
Half Internationals and their
Amsterdam trade-union internation-
al in The Hague. The reformists were
afraid to invite representatives ofthe
Communist International and its
Red International of Labor Unions,
and instead there were delegatesfrom
bourgeois pacifist societies. The
Executive Committee of the Comin-
tern issuedamanifesto on The Hague
Peace Conference ca/iing to "rally the
forces of the working class so that the
proletariat should not again become
the cannon fodder of capitalism."
and denouncing the exclusion of
three mil/ion members of the Com-
munist parties which were 'formed of
precisely those elements which dur-
ing the [First World] War fought
most boldly for peace." An extract
from this manifesto is published
below.

At the same moment as they were
preventing the formation of the
proletarian united front against
imperalism they concluded an alli-
ance with the bourgeois pacifists. For
the first time in the history of the
modern workers' movement there
was a joint congress of trade unions
and political workers' organizations
with the representatives of a part of
the bourgeoisie, who were thus given
the opportunity of helping to decide
the most important question of the
workers' movement. This was justi-
fied on the ground that all forces
hostile to war must be rallied for the
fight again'st war. But this argument
is a sheer swindle. The Amsterdamers
have rejected an alliance with the
revolutionary workers who are the
only real opponents of imperialist
war. They ally themselves only with
the bourgeois pacifists who during
the war went over just like the
Amsterdamers into the capitalist
camp and helped imperialism to
mangle the body of the proletariat.
In rejecting the proletarian united
front and concluding an alliance with
the bourgeois groups the three
Internationals passed sentence on the
Hague conference. People who reject
joint action with the revolutionary
proletariat and prefer a bourgeois
alliance have no real desire to fight
against war. Imperialist war serves
the interests of the bourgeoisie and
whoever allies himself with the
bourgeoisie unnerves and debilitates
the working class and makes it
impossible for them to fight against
the war danger ....
Letter
I saw Anti-Spartacist League At Work
WORKERS
VANfilJAfilJ
Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of
the Spartacist League of the U.S.
EDITOR: Jan Norden
PRODUCTION Darlene Kamiura (Manager),
Noah Wilner
CIRCULATION MANAGER: Linda Jarreau
EDITORIAL BOARD: George Foster.
Liz Gordon. Mary Jo McAllister.
James Robertson, Reuben Samuels,
Joseph Seymour. Marjorie Stamberg
Workers Vanguard (USPS 098-770) published
biweekly, skipping an issue in August and
a week in December, by the Spartacist
Publishing Co. 41 Warren Street. New York.
NY 10007 Telephone: 732-7862 (Editorial),
732-7861 (Business) Address all corres-
pondence to: Box 1377. GPO. New York, NY
10116 Domestic subscriptions $5.00/24
issues. Second-class postage paid at New
York, NY.
Opinions expressed In Signed articles or
letters do not necessarily express the editorial
viewpoint.
23 July 1982 No. 310
perpetrated by the local media, politi-
cians, and Coalition members.
Hopefully it is clear that the RSL and
RWL are so obsessed with stopping the
SL that they set-up a separate coalition,
thereby disrupting the formation of a
united mobilization to stop the Nazis in
Ann Arbor. This point which has been
repeated many times over the years by
Workers Vanguard is definitely not the
paranoid ravings of a disintegrating
leadership, as RSLers like to claim.
These groups really do spend a lot of
time plotting against the Spartacists.
And yes, they really are so paralyzed
with the political fear of presenting
themselves as principled Trotskyists
before the rad-Iib milieu, that they
literally end up being led around by anti-
communist "progressives" like Fasen-
fest. Most of the time only the public
manifestations of these processes are
seen. Much less often is there an
opportunity such as this to view petty
and sectarian opportunism in the flesh.
In solidarity,
Gene Goldenfeld
the Coalition members were so excited
about-maybe 40 percent of the room-
were in large part the ones who had been
applauding speeches in favor of ignor-
ing the Nazis. At the same time an SL-
initiated motion for a counter-
demonstration under the call "Drive the
Nazis Out" had accumulated what
appeared to be a majority through the
course of discussion. The RSL and
RWL must have been feeling lonely,
since their co-chairs proceeded to abort
their own meeting by refusing to allow a
vote on the SL's motion. And then they
spread the lie through town and country
that the Spartacists were selfishly trying
to disrupt the developing anti-Nazi
mobilization.
In preparing for the next [March 9]
meeting, RSLer Mike, known for his
macho-military image, wanted to ex-
clude the SL at the door, preferring to
provoke a fight in the hallway than in
the meeting room. For GEO activist and
RWL supporter Joe Graves, exclusion
of the SL was not "unprincipled," just a
"matter of tactics." His choice and the
one which prevailed was to "allow a
Spartacist disruption, vote to silence
them, and if that does not work, get
some 'volunteers' to remove them."
Of course, on meeting night the fact
that there was no disruption did not
deter co-chair Graves from refusing to
call on Committee [to Stop the Nazis]
supporters, nor Fasenfest from making
that a formal proposal, quickly adopt-
ed. The few of us Committee supporters
present walked out in protest, leaving
their confrontational fantasies
unfulfilled.
Late in the steering committee meet-
ing one RWLer suggested that the SL is
best "cowed by others, not leftists," and
when that happens (in a meeting) it ends
up "sulking." On the contrary, it has
been the "leftists and others" who have
been sulking over the wide-ranging and
professional mobilization carried out by
the Committee. And the Spartacist
League and Committee endorsers who
have refused to be cowed by the heavy
barrage of lies and misrepresentations
2,000 protesters heeded call of SL-
initiated Committee to Stop Nazis.
endorsement list because it would be
seen as too "leftist" and "drive others
away." It could be used later, he added,
after seeing what the SL had done. In
fact, posted copies of the Coalition's
flyer (that I saw) did not name endors-
ers, unlike the [SL-initiated] Commit-
tee's publicity.
Finally, the last half hour was spent
specifically discussing "how best to 'take
care' of the SL" at the next Coalition
mass (unpublicized) meeting. They were
particularly upset that "most people"
had left the previous one [March 2] well
before the end, allegedly due to Sparta-
cist "disruption." Actually those people
refusal to seriously approach the labor
movement, a phrase about defending
labor was added only as an afterthought
nearly an hour later.
Leaflet discussion continued in the
same anti-SL vein. An RSLer initially
wanted a statement disclaiming affilia-
tion with the Committee's call: "This is
not the Spartacist demonstration." An
RWLer proposed against having an
Ann Arbor, Michigan
May 21, 1982
Workers Vanguard
New York, NY
To the Editor:
This is to offer some additional
ihformation and comments about
events surrounding the March 20th
Stop the Nazis mobilization. Having
attended (observed) the [March 4]
steering committee meeting at which the
"Coalition Against the Nazis"
coalesced, I can testify to the fact that
what held this group together was
primarily opposition to the Spartacist
League. Those attending this meeting-
representatives and supporters of the
RWL and RSL (several each), Iranian
Students Association, Socialist Party,
'IWW, Republic of New Africa (observ-
er), U of M student government, and
several other individuals-were so
obsessed with the SL and the Commit-
tee to Stop the Nazis that over half of the
three-and-a-half hour session was spent
debating how best to "deal" with them.
First, there was the matter of a slogan.
One RSLer unwittingly proposed,
"Stop the Nazis." "Oh, no, no, no,"
came cries from around the room.
"That's the Sparts' slogan!" Next tried
by Graduate Employees Organization
(GEO) activist David Fasenfest was
"Unite Against the Nazis and the
Spartacists." That one was apparently
fifty percent too honest for the RWL, as
it was quickly quenched in favor of,
"Unite to Stop the Nazis and the Klan."
Fasenfest was not satisfied, however.
Just as a consensus was being reached he
objected that the slogan's thrust should
differentiate them from the SL. So
"Stop" was replaced by "Against," and
all were noticeably relieved, having been
saved from the Spartacist menace.
From there the usual potpourri of
sectoral demands were added, demol-
ishing even the semblance of a united
front. Consistent with their subsequent
2 WORKERS VANGUARD
Anti-Red Exclusion Defeated in Detroit Demo
SL:"Defendthe Palestinians! Israel Out of Lebanon!"
president of UAW Local 600 at Ford's
River Rouge plant. Rinaldi, who also
didn't accept the invite, is currently up
to his ears in a campaign of American
jingoism against Japanese imports; the
fact that chauvinist protectionism is
the stuff world wars are made of didn't
bother the "leftists" in this rotten
Committee. The Socialist Workers
Party (SWP) ran the show, with help
DETROIT-Organizers of a June 10
protest here were determined to
channel the deep outrage over Israel's
bloody Lebanese Blitzkrieg against the
Palestinians into a display of Arab
nationalism and pro-Democratic
Party politics (replete with an Ameri-
can flag). But the assorted reformists
were unable. despite repeated at-
tempts. to drown out the class-struggle
slogans of the Spartacist League
(SL) or exclude our banner demand-
ing: "Defend the Palestinians! U.S.
hands off! Israel out of Lebanon! For
a socialist federation of the Near
East!" At a rally at the Kern Block
after the march, the chairman took
pains to apologize for "certain"
unacceptable SL slogans, like "Not
Jew against Arab, but class against
class!" and "Stop Begin's 'Final Solu-
tion'! For Hebrew and Arab workers
revolution!"
The march and rally were called by a
Committee to Support the Lebanese
and Palestinian People, which in-
cludes a stable of left groups doing
donkey work for liberal Democrats
like black Congressman John Con-
yers. In addition, invited speakers
included Mike "Giveback" Rinaldi,
, .-
PSi IS. rib(, .
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iUi,W;: IIIIIIII1'ir;R!l
I
PALfsrlNfAN3'
U. S. HANDS OFF!
OUT Of LEBA-NON'
fOR ASDCt/iUST fEDRAHON
Of THE NEAR EAST r
WV Photo
from the Communist Party, Workers
World Party, Shachtmanites and some
Arab nationalists. The sectlike Revo-
lutionary Workers League showed up
with a leaflet labeling the reactionary
Assad regime in Syria a "tactical ally"
of the world working class and calling
on the Committee to keep up the good
work.
Just what the Committee's "good
work" consists of was shown by
SWP supporters who tried to mobilize
marchers to exclude a spirited contin-
gent of SL supporters that cut through
the nationalism and "guns versus
butter" reformism to pose a working-
class program against Reagan/Begin
reaction. But instead of doing the
reformists' dirty work. many marchers
picked up our chants and several
joined the contingent, the largest of the
demonstration. Toward the end of the
rally fake leftists in the Committee
stalled around. trying to keep a crowd
together for Conyers (who never
showed). The SL contingent marched
away, chanting "U.S. imperialism:
Hands off Lebanon! Break with the
Democrats! Build a workers party!"
The impact of the Spartacist
intervention was reflected in the more
than 100 copies of Workers Vanguard
and Young Spartacus sold. That
evening Channel 4 news showed an SL
spokesman explaining that we
marched to demonstrate our solidarity
with the Palestinians facing extermi-
nation in Lebanon, and that the only
possible way out against Begin, Rea-
gan and all the capitalist butchers is
through socialist revolution.
Beirut Death
Siege...
(continued from page 1)
military facts on the ground which the
U.S. was able to convert into political
gains. Much of [Washington's] strength
in this area stems from the Arabs'
recognition that only the U.S. can
squeeze concessions out of israel."
-Newsweek. 19 July
Given the savagery of Begin's terror in
Lebanon, this hard cop/soft cop act is
having its effect on the petty-bourgeois
nationalist leadership of the PLO.
Arafat has reportedly demanded a U.S.
and French force to act as a "buffer"
between the Israeli army and Palestini-
an commandos. Does anyone really
believe that the U. S., which arms Israel's
war machine and supports its invasion
of Lebanon, and that France, the
historic champion of the Maronite
Christian domination, will protect the
Palestinians from their mortal enemies?
Yet U.S. leftists too are calling on
Reagan to impose a Pax Americana in
the Near East. When Begin came to
denounce peace at the UN disarmament
conference last month, a protest heavily
built by Sam Marcy's Workers World
Party demanded "effective U.S. action
to achieve Israeli withdrawal."
And what do these self-styled "anti-
imperialists" say now that Reagan has
proposed "effective action" in Lebanon?
On July 10 Marcyites, the pro-Moscow
Stalinist Communist Party, the wretch-
edly reformist Socialist Workers Party,
etc. organized another demonstration in
New York, which refused to oppose
U.S. Marines to Lebanon! Although
this proposal was front-page news and a
major issue in Washington, the demon-
stration was limited to two "safe"
demands: Israeli withdrawal and cessa-
tion of U.S. weapons sales (not even all
economic aid) to Israel. The Trotskyists
say: Keep the imperialist "peacemakers"
out-Bloody U.S. hands off Lebanon!
Defend the Palestinians!
The intricate negotiations over the
6.000 commandos trapped in Lebanon
are over the terms of their surrender.
And their surrender will lead only to
further massacres. The withdrawal or
destruction of PLO forces in Lebanon
will bring not peace but only the
23 JULY 1982
beginning of the Zionists' "final solu-
tion" for the Palestinians, with much of
the dirty work being done by their
Maronite Christian allies.
The Jerusalem candidate for next
president of Lebanon, Phalange chief-
tain and psychopathic killer Bashir
Gemayel, told a group of visiting
Europeans that all of the half million
Palestinians must leave Lebanon, going
perhaps to Saudi Arabia, where "they
could live in tents like Bedouin." And in
Israeli-occupied southern Lebanon the
death squads of its puppet, Major Saad
Haddad, are busy at work. According to
the leading Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz
(11 July), "the soldiers of Major Saad
Haddad pass from house to house in the
villages which were conquered by the
Israeli army and exterminate the last
nests of the terrorists." For "terrorists,"
read Palestinians.
The will to fight on the part of the
PLO forces, despite the overwhelming
odds against them, is critical as the fate
of the Palestinian people hangs in the
balance. One Palestinian commando
declared: "Maybe the Israelis will come
and maybe they will win here, but I
promise you it will be a big cemetery for
them." And that fear is the only thing
staying the hand of Begin from sending
his soldiers into west Beirut. The New
York Times' military specialist, Drew
Middleton, wrote on July 18 that "the
prospect of heavy casualties in city
fighting is evidently one reason the high
command in Tel Aviv has counseled
caution." For Begin/Sharon know that
every casualty has a greatly magnified
impact on Israeli society with its master-
race mentality. There has emerged a
large-scale Zionist "dove" movement,
an unprecedented development in war-
time. Tens of thousands have demon-
strated against the war in Tel Aviv.
Army reservists have come home from
the war and given press conferences
denouncing what they've done. One
Jewish woman. who lost her only son in
the battle for Beaumont Castle, wrote
an open letter to Begin/Sharon: "The
history of our ancient, wise and perse-
cuted nation will judge you with whips
and scorpions. and your deeds will be an
eternal damnation" (Ha'aretz. 5 July).
What is now shaking this deeply
chauvinist society is the shedding of its
own blood. This is an unfortunate truth:
every Israeli soldier who comes back
from Lebanon in a body bag offers that
much more of a chance that the
Palestinians will escape the Zionists'
holocaust.
For a Proletarian,
Internationalist Party
If ever there was a time to build
revolutionary internationalist parties
among the Hebrew-speaking people and
Palestinian masses, that time is now.
Palestinian militants can see that their
dependence on one or another Arab
regime has left them isolated before
Begin's war machine, while increasing
numbers of Israeli Jews are beginning to
understand the logic of Zionist expan-
sionism will ultimately lead to their self-
destruction in a surrounding sea of
hundreds of millions of Arabs.
The PLO has finally achieved the
elusive goal of Arab unity ... against
themselves! Not one Arab state has
agreed to date to accept the commandos
trapped in west Beirut. The Arab
world's number one megalomaniacal
dictator. Muammar al Qaddafi, has
even told the PLO to commit suicide.
(Where does that leave the Libyan
prophet's British messengers, Gerry
Healy & Co., who pretend to be the
great defenders of the Palestinians?) The
Syrian Ba'athists have told the PLO
guerrillas in west Beirut that "their
normal place is where they are now.
awaiting the return of their legitimate
rights." The only place Begin will let the
Palestinians await their legitimate rights
in Beirut is in a mass grave.
Naturally many ostensible leftists still
cheer for Arab nationalism. An espe-
cially gross example is the Lebanese
section of Ernest Mandel's United
Secretariat, the Revolutionary Commu-
nist Group (RCG), which is calling for
the most ludicrous popular front. The
RCG states its desire to "preserve our
Patriotic army" and proposes "a Na-
tional Resistance Government com-
posed of all forces who are really
fighting the Zionist enemy" (Interna-
tional Vie't'.point. 10 July). Chief among
these is Walid Jumblatt, who is sup-
posed to be the leader of a Lebanese
"revolutionary national resistance." In
reality. Jumblatt has stabbed the be-
sieged PLO forces in the back, publicly
denounced them and demanded that
they disarm. The RCG's appeal to the
"patriotic" Maronite-dominated army,
which spawned Major Saad Haddad, is
simply incredible.
The PLO militants under the gun
have a better sense of the reality facing
them. One told the New York Times (4
July): "You see where the Israelis are.
Well behind the Israelis is King Fahd
and Hafez el-Assad and King Hussein.
They are all in this together ...."
Palestinian militants and would-be
revolutionaries must truly grasp this.
They must break with their reliance on
the sheiks of OPEC and the colonels of
Baghdad and Damascus. break with the
ideology of Arab nationalism which
represents a dead end both for national
justice for the Palestinians and for the
liberation of the toilers of the Near East.
Only a proletarian internationalist
perspective can shatter the Zionist state
from within. Begin's bloody adventure
in Lebanon has exposed the deep-seated
contradictions of Israeli society. Facing
the prospect of endless wars of conquest
with the Arab world, there is now a
flurry of Zionist "doves" seeking a
rapprochement with the Palestinian
national movement. One such, Uri
Avnery, actually visited Arafat in
besieged west Beirut, an act for which
the Begin regime is charging him with
treason! According to Avnery, he and
the PLO chief reached a meeting of the
minds that Palestinian self-determina-
tion could be realized in a West Bank
state.
In reality. such a mini-state, even if it
could be realized, would be nothing
but a "bantustan" supplying super-
exploited Palestinian labor to Israel. As
we wrote several years ago when the
PLO adopted this despairing program:
"Recognizing the right of self-
determination for both the Palestinian
Arabs and Hebrews. we point out that
this can only be accomplished on both
sides of the Jordan. including all of
what now constitutes Israel and Jordan.
These national claims, however. are
directly counterposed. the product of
historical interpenetration of two peo-
ples on the same territory. Under
capitalism. another partition of Pales-
tine. with its massive forced population
transfers. can only bring untold misery
to the working masses ......
-"Palestinian Nationalism ...
From 'People's War to the
Mini-State ... WV No. 58.
6 December 1974
A Just and genuinely democratic solu-
tion to the competing national claims of
the Palestinian Arabs and Hebrews
requires the overthrow of the capitalist
states in the region. It can come about
only through a socialist federation of the
Near East, born of a common struggle
of Arab and Jewish workers under a
communist leadership against their
ruling classes.
3
Bekken's Nasty Lies
Ann Arbor Street Sheet Nailed
In struggle,
Jon Bekken
GEO (AFT Local 3550) Steering Com-
mittee & Bargaining Team Member,
Member, Creative Urge Anarchist
Group
P.S.: To date, you have not yet sent me
my copy of the issue in question, even
though I am a subscriber to your paper.
I would appreciate receiving my copy so
that I can file it along with other attacks
from state & university functionaries
and a variety of right-wing newspapers.
Thank you.

Spart Goons
Shortly af'er 'he Nazi, announced 'peaker system of 'he coalition while
'heir plans On February 19, 'he 'he 'housands marched against 'he
Coalition Against Nazis began holding Nazis.
public mee'ings '0 inyne participa'ion The Sparts had turned endorsement
of all concerned groups and indiYiduals gatherirng into a COntest. Initial endor_
in responding to 'he plans of the Nazis. semenrs of 'he Coalition came primarily
Around 100 people showed up for the from participa'ing groups and in-
first meeting. The Detroit and Ann Ar- diYiduals and a few sympathetic o'hers.
bor area Sparticist League Was Out in The Sparts scrounged around for in-
force, all 16 of them_ Our of concern diYiduals in some of these groups who
for democra'ic process, the Coalition didn't know their groups had endorsed
subjucted itself to the SL's usual boring the Coalition so that their affilia'ions
and divisive harangues. The Sparts could be used "for identification pur-
pretended that 'hey were interested in POses only" as la'er, but not earlier,
joining the coalition if it would adop, leanets of the Committee stated. A
as its sole slogan, "DriYe the Nazis Our casual reader of the Spart leaners is left
of Ann Arbor." with the distinct impression that the
The Sparts mUst have been relieyed Committee is endorsed by a large num-
when their single slogan prOPOsal failed ber oi groups. In fact, it Was endorsed by
for lack of suPPOrt from anyone other a bunch of indiYiduals and Some
than 'he Sparts. Sparts don', jOin groups, most of whom sincerely wan'ed
democratic coalitions. They won't par- to express 'heir hostili'y to nazism and
'icipate in anything they can't dominate had no idea that they were being used in
and manipulate. So the Yote On 'his an attempt to aggrandize a stalinoid
slogan so crucial to the Sparts gave party at the same time. Sparts lied '0
them 'he justification 'hey Wanted to some of the endorsers, stating that
spli, from the coalition and bUild their theirs was 'he only show in 'own. In at
Own demonstration while least one case when an endorser with-
simultaneously frying to undermine the drew his suPPOrt of the Committee in
demonstration of the coalition. order to sUPPOrt the Coalition, the
Thousands did march against the Nazis, Sparts Continued '0 use his name. In
bUI the only leadership they needed was another Ihey garnered the endorsement
their ow , nOI that of some ass hole of a local labor leader who thought he
--... ' .......-loi!.!!.!lI- f, nOf only sUpponing Ihe same group endor_
. t the direction of
tor from our, a "him Nor did
the chair I did not Jump , SL
' k t stop the one
anyone see 0 b of the
orter who was a mem er ,
eaking against the motIOn
anti-Nazi demonstration,
to en d very
I demand retraction of each an e has
laims, My attorney .
one of these c e statements indls-
advised me thes se" and that
I "libelous per ,
putab y to them. If you
you are 0 I . if ou refuse to
do not print thiS letter, or . y I '11 be
fie allegations, WI
retract these ppropriate action.
forced to consl er a .
The SL's very visible frustrat.lOn .at
.. . nized despite ItS
having been money and time
massive this can.not
is understandab '. t leftist orgamza-
justify attacks. libel. 1anticipate
tions nor can It JUstl y 10
your 'full retraction and apo gy.
distinction. I am quite willing to rely on
exposing the SL's actions, and challeng-
ing its politics, to accomplish my goals;
and, with Hereshoff, am willing to let the
(politically) dead bury their own dead.
It is true that I have advocated-
along with many others-that people
attending events where the SL is likely
to be present should be prepared to
defend themselves, a precaution clearly
necessitated by your attacks on anti-
fascist demonstrators on March 20th.
Similarly, the groups that have been
leafletting SL events in Ann Arbor
(exposing the SL's actions to the
handful that attend these programs,
demanding reparations for the SL-
inflicted damages, and demanding SL
repudiation of this-and similar-
attack(s should take precautions to
protect themselves. The increasing
desperation of the SL as it continues to
shrink and loses what base it once had is
making it demonstrably more danger-
ous, and more prone to turn to violent
attack against its opponents on the left.
Thus, I do advocate self-defense, but I
do not advocate attacks against SL
members-or physical attacks against
the SL-as your article states. This
charge is especially vicious, and I
demand that you retract it.
Finally, your article claims that I
jumped a SL member at a meeting of my
union local (G.E.O., AFT #3550) and
"tried" to remove him from the meeting
room. Although I did remove a disrup-
contacts/arguments at various demon-
strations, protests, etc.). At all times I
made clear my deep political differences
with the SL, while defending its right to
put forward its program in a principled
and non-disruptive way (something it
was doing when I arrived in Ann Arbor,
and ceased doing this year).
The second claim is inaccurate and
consciously misleading. The Street
Sheet is published by a gathering of
eleven Ann Arbor area anarchists, as
was noted in a note in the issue you refer
to, and I played a relatively minor role in
this. Your characterization of the
paper-which is hardly "slick"-as my
personal effort does not equitably assign
credit. Furthermore, nowhere in the
Street Sheet (#1) is the Spartacist
League red-baited (nor would we charge
the SL with being "reds", an honor you
do not deserve). Nor is the SL cop-
baited anywhere in the paper. It does
describe and denounce your prolonged
disruption of anti-Nazi organizing
efforts, and your attack upon the
Coalition Against the Nazis' borrowed
sound system (an attack gleefully
proclaimed in the Workers Vanguard).
As to your claim that the rally at which
you admit trashing our sound system
was your own (as if that somehow
justified the SL's actions), I refer you to
the pictures published in the Workers
Vanguard of the demonstration, which
show the vast majority of the crowd
standing with their backs to the SL
sound system, clustered around the
(conveniently cropped out) Coalition
sound system.
Third, and most serious, are your
charges that I have issued death threats
against the SL and advocated armed
goon squads at future demonstrations.
These charges are libelous, and abso-
lutely without basis in fact. Although I
have, on various occasions, noted that
the SL is a dying organization and
expressed my commitment to helping
that process along, I have never advo-
cated, or supported, or volunteered to
"kill" members of the Spartacist
League. In fact, I specifically disabused
one of your members of this notion
when she appeared to be missing the
The article also contains gratuitous
adjectives which I will not discuss
further.
Although not the most serious of
these claims, the allegation that I have
hung around the Spartacist League is
false, misleading and libelous. My
contacts with your organization have
been limited to attendance at 2 of your
forums in Ann Arbor, attendance
at a picket-line demonstration co-spon-
sored by you and the RWL, cooperation
with the SYL in opposing an attempt by
the U. of Michigan student government
to deny the SYL funding in retaliation
for its political positions, subscribing to
your paper, and defending your right to
attend the Progressive Student Network
Conference in 1981 (outside of various
1767 Second Avenue
San Diego, CA 92101
28 May 1982
Editor, Workers Vanguard
Box 1377, GPO
New York, NY 10116
I am writing to demand retraction of
libelous statements made in your paper
on 14 May 1982. Although the article in
question ("The Big Lie", pp. 6-10) con-
tained several false allegations, I will
deal only with the charges against me
specifically, dealing with a few other
releyant points in passing.
The article makes the following
statements:
(I) That I have "in the past hung
around the Spartacist League";
(2) That I "suddenly turn(ed) out a
slick 8-page printed 'Street
Sheet'" which red-baited, cop-
baited and violence-baited the SL;
(3) That I am "now issuing death
threats against. .. (the SL), advo-
cating 'armed' goon squads at
future demonstrations and vow-
ing in front of witnesses to 'kill' the
Spartacists";
& (4) That I "jumped a Spartacist
supporter and tried to drag him
from the meeting room" of the
Graduate Employees Organiza-
tion (AFT #3550), of which I am
an officer.
Workers Vanguard Comments:
We are gratified that our article in
Workers Vanguard No. 305 ("The Big
Lie," 14 May) has forced Jon Bekken to
back down publicly from his threats of
violence against our organization. We
interpret his denials to be a form of
retraction, and it's a good thing he's
climbed down. Signed statements from
those who overheard him April 16
outside an SYL-sponsored film showing
in Ann Arbor stipulate that he threat-
ened "we will kill you the next time you
use your methods" and that there would
be "armed security" against the SL in
the future. So provocative and strident-
ly violent were these statements, that
one of our comrades recorded them
and-as we are confident Bekken
recalls-challenged him to sign them on
the spot. A challenge Bekken refused,
perhaps, because his preferred methods
are hit-and-run harassment and the
verbal swaggering of a street-eorner
punk.
Street Sheet is an example ofjust such
methods. Its first (and to date, only)
issue appeared unsigned, undated and at
the height of anti-communist backlash
against the SL/SYL following the
March 20 anti-Nazi protest which drove
the fascists out of town. Bekken was the
primary and most visible distributor of
this anti-Spartacist slander sheet. The
identities of those other than Bekken
involved in Sheet's production are
certainly not known to us; it describes
the "collective" simply as "a gathering of
Ann Arbor area anarchist-communists,
-feminists, and -syndicalists." We do
know the malicious and willfully pro-
vocative character of the Sheet, most
particularly its "polemical" article
"Spart Goons," which directs the reader
to conclude that there is "no room" on
the left for the SL and it's time that we be
"directly confronted." We know too
that someone has been busily circulating
the Sheet's lying account of the March
20 anti-Nazi protest to various anarchist
newspapers: the San Diego New Indica-
tor (13 April-26 April)-with which
Bekken was previously and seems to still
be associated-and the Canadian
Strike! (15 May) have both published
the lead article from Street Sheet word
for word.
The sorry anarchist milieu has, in the
Get the Truth...
Behind the "'eft" slander campaign
against the Spartacist League.
Workers Vanguard No. 305
14 May 1982

Make payable/Mail to:
Spartacist Publishing Company
Box 1377 GPO
New York, NY 10116
Cold War atmosphere of Reagan's
America, descended to new depths of
anti-eommunism in general and attacks
on the Trotskyist SL/SYL in particular,
since we are correctly viewed as the
WfJlKEIS"NGfJ'6IJ'"
-





- ., Slopped 1IIe Nazis, -

4
WORKERS VANGUARD
-
Used Lie Salesmen
General Haig's Anarchists
--------_._---------_._--_.
Readers of Workers Vanguard are
aware of the anti-Spartacist campaign
being conducted by so-called left
groups from the largest to the most
inconsequential. The stupider ones are
more than willing to use any fiction or
slander against us, including those that
come from the anti-Soviet propaganda
mills of Langley, Virginia. Last No-
vember the Detroit anarchist rag Fifth
Estate ran a lurid tale of Trotskyite
vampires drooling over the blood of
Polish workers and Afghan tribesmen,
entitled "Hail Red Army Nerve Gas!"
Now they have been forced to eat their
words, publishing what is, although
smothered in insult and innuendo, an
apology and retraction.
We nailed this little band of Big
Liars, showing that their vicious smear
comes straight out of the mouth of
General Alexander Haig. Our answer
("See You at Kronstadt," WVNo. 297,
22 January) pointed out in detail how
the (now former) U.S. secretary of
state's claims are all based on "evi-
dence" supplied by U.S.-backed reac-
tionary guerrillas and CIA mercena-
ries, that there is no physical trace of
the alleged mycotoxins, and that it's all
just too convenient for the U.S. chem
warriors who napalmed Vietnamese
peasants and dumped almost 100,000
tons of defoliants like Agent Orange
on Southeast Asia. In our article "The
Big Lie" ( WV No. 305), we comment-
ed: "Problem is, (I) the USSR doesn't
pour 'yellow rain' on millions of brown
skinned peoples, an act which would
be exclusively for the benefit of
General Haig; and (2) if they'd done
what they didn't, we wouldn't hail it."
Caught yellow-handed, in its June
19 issue the Fifth Estate tries to explain

, 2,,,,,
its "tongue-in-cheek title":
"They [the SL] apparently don't be-
lieve the charges that the Soviet army
is gassing Afghani tribesmen, and
from what we have heard subsequent-
ly it does appear that many of the
claims are at best shaky. Nevertheless,
if much of the evidence for Soviet use
of gas in Afghanistan turned out to be
U.S. State Department ballyhoo, it
certainly was not beyond the realm of
the possible (and we still would not lay
money down that they haven't used it).
"Still, we prefer to be accurate in our
claims and don't mind making retrac-
0'-....""
rrr,-..o,"'>, ... ,o,.",,,,,,"',o,....... o,
'"'''Q'U''''''''' '''II'<'nc.,,_......,<Q.h,,"'''
:::-:';:=

"" '0. ...t n ....,.. '
.... ".,..,.C>. o' .", """'pl,,.n V
O
,. """"'l'o<
.... ,....... " ....
tions when they are in order. So
perhaps an apology is called for:
instead of'Hail Red Army Nerve Gas,'
a more appropriate slogan might be
'Defend Red Army Nerve Gas,' since
they must believe that 'defense of the
socialist motherland' begins with the
defense of its nerve gas .....
"Tongue-in-cheek"? More like foot-in-
mouth disease. The spaced-out Fifth
Estate is so high on anti-communism
that sometimes their minds are in sync
with the fevered dreams of an Al Haig
or Jeane Kirkpatrick.


"0\
,
(
stration") fought Bekken's attacks off
three times. Eventually, GEO member
Gene Goldenfeld and RWL supporter
Joe Graves (the latter albeit reluctantly),
came to the aid of our supporter and he
was able to make his remarks. Even
Bekkeo's attempt to ascribe blame for
the botched exclusion attempt is a lie.
While the chair of the meeting was a
prominent local supporter of the Stalin-
ist Young Workers Liberation League
and certainly not above such breaches of
workers democracy, Bekken acted on
his own initiative.
Even Bekken's amusing postscript, in
which he complains about delivery of
his WV subscription, has no more basis
in fact than the rest of his letter. Bekken
disappears from Ann Arbor and expects
our circulation department to track his
subsequent surfacing in San Diego?
He's welcome to "file" WVwherever he
wants.
Bekken is not only a liar-he's a very
careless liar. Street Sheet says openly
what the rest of the anti-Spartacists only
dare to whisper in the corridors. They
probably think he's god's gift to them.
Well, he's somebody's gift. We are
reminded of the Wayne State Universi-
ty's South End attempt to frame the
SYL for arson following aggressive
campaigns waged by us against Nazi/
Klan terror and FBI recruitment on that
campus: we asked then, is COINTEL-
PRO really dead?
While musing over the counter-
revolutionary exploits of anarchist hero
Makhno or brushing up on Bookchin,
Bekken may contemplate this: the
reference may be obscure to him, but he
has joined Michel Varga in a category in
history known as dubious figures.
'" :::J
U

ro
a.

::J f
l
in the paper"? We need only quote from
"Spart Goons" again:
"The only way the Sparts may have
been involved in driving the :\Iazis out is
if one of their people happened to be
behind the wheel of the police hus which
helped the Nazis make their escape."
Not violence-baited? The title "Spart
Goons" rather speaks for itself. Nor
does Sheer content itself with the now-
standard Big Lie absurdity that we built
the March 20 rally in Ann Arbor as a
cover for our plot to attack anti-Nazi
protesters. Perhaps succumbing to a
"creative urge," it claims: "This same
day, Spart goons attacked an anti-Nazi
demonstration in Connecticut." Actual-
ly, there were two demonstrations in
Connecticut on March 20. The rally
held in Meriden, Connecticut was an
anti-Klan protest, while "non-
confrontational" liberals gathered to
hear Paul Newman at a "Unity Day" in
Hartford. Which one does Bekken claim
we attacked? The SL was not present at
either.
Bekken wants to quibble over wheth-
er he "jumped" or "removed" an SL-
supporter from the March 8 meeting of
the University of Michigan Graduate
Employees Organization (GEO). In so
doing he may be motivated by wounded
vanity, a penchant for compulsive lying
or both since, a) our supporter was not
removed and ultimately was able to
make his presentation to the meeting;
and b) Bekken's unsuccessful attempt at
thuggery was carried out in front of a
plethora of witnesses. The SL support-
er, who was there to seek GEO endorse-
ment for the anti-Nazi rally called by the
SL-initiated Committee (and not, as
Bekken claims, to "speak against the
motion to endorse the anti-Nazi demon-
Did the rabidly
anti-Soviet
Bekken "hang
around" the SL for
the same reason
Eichmann learned
Hebrew?
demonstration and even went out of his
way to defend our rights on one
occasion. Joining the SYL-called anti-
military protest last October, Bekken
had no compunctions about carrying a
placard denouncing Reagan's anti-
Soviet Cold War drive (see photo). But
several months later, in late January, it
was precisely our demand for defense of
the Soviet Union raised at a protest
against the Moral Majority which sent
him into a frenzy, chanting "down with
vanguard parties!" Now he's turned up
in San Diego, threatening us with a libel
suit. Perhaps Bekken's initial relations
with the Ann Arbor SL/SYL is a case
analogous to the fact that the Nazi
Eichmann studied Hebrew so as better
to play his role in the extermination of
Jews.
Unfortunately for our inconsistent
"anarchist," while paper may take
anything that's written on it (as Stalin is
supposed to have said), once it's written,
it's written. "Nowhere in the Street
Sheer (# I) is the Spartacist League red-
baited," he claims. Perhaps Bekken now
wants to retract the Sheet's Hoover-
esque "explanation" for the broad labor
support received by the SL-initiated
Committee to Stop the Nazis, i.e. that
"some sincere labor people ... had fallen
victim to their duplicity" and that
among the endorsers were those who
"sincerely wanted to express their
hostility to nazism and had no idea that
they were being used to aggrandize a
stalinoid party at the same time." If he
doesn't think that's straight out of
Masters of Deceit, then Bekken doesn't
know what red-baiting is; but we think
he does.
The SL is not cop-baited "anywhere
WV Photo
A liar's "Exhibit A": this is the photo Bekken claims shows the crowd listening
to "Coalition" speakers.
outstanding genuine defenders of the
gains of October against U.S. imperial-
ism. In this vein, the Detroit anarchist
rag Fifth Estate tried to smear us with
Haig's Big Lie about Soviet "yellow
rain," to pin us with the slogan "Hail
Red Army Nerve Gas." But Sheet is an
even cruder version, wildly slanderous
and, as we will show, filled with "red-
baiting, cop-baiting, violence-baiting
filth against the SL."
In Bekken, we have an "anarchist"
who threatens to sue us for libel,
revealing a touching faith in the state,
which to anarchists is supposed to be the
main enemy, virtually by definition. (He
hates the Russian state, of course.)
Bekken's on to something all right-
there is a class and political bias built
into the capitalist courts which makes
them a potentially promising arena for
anti-communist vendettas like his. It
probably doesn't hurt, either, to have
attorneys in the family-but if Bekken
ever attempted to carry out his threats of
deadly force he can be certain he'd be
slapped with criminal charges his lawyer
mommy and daddy couldn't easily get
him out of. Murder of reds is, at least
nominally, not legal in this country
today.
Bekken is notably eager to deny that
he hung around the Ann Arbor SL/
SYL, but his own words simply substan-
tiate our assertion that he did. His
description of the number and types of
SL/SYL events in which he participated
is, so far as we know, substantially
complete. Yet, for at least two years
previously, while at the University of
California at San Diego, he was a hostile
anti-Spartacist. Then he arrived in Ann
Arbor, attended forums, a picket line
23 JULY 1982 5
Black NYC Transit Worker Speaks in Europe
e ru

merlca
ac
eaaan's

In
Oust the Labor Fakers-
Break with the Democrats!
For a Class-Struggle Worker:; Party!
which primarily serves poor black
people. It was closed because the New
York City mayor claimed that there
wasn't enough money to keep the
emergency ward open. By doing this he
condemned thousands of blacks to no
medical treatment whatsoever for inju-
ries, since this is the facility that they
normally use. So this issue, along with
the issue of Reagan's campaign against
labor, as well as his anti-labor move-
ment against the USSR were issues I
raised as part of my campaign for Local
100 president.
I raised the issue that the working
class in America must fight politically
for power if it is to defend its interests
against the capitalist attacks. Not only
the issue of striking, but also the issue of
a workers party to fight for a workers
government as critical issues for the
victory of the working class. Now, John
Lawe won in the elections because he
successfully demoralized broad sections
of the Transport Workers Union. He
did this by allowing a strike to be lost
about a year and a half ago. After about
a week of striking, the governor of New
York and the city mayor were about to
give in. But just before the city and the
state capitulated, which was to happen
within 24 hours, as we found out later
on, our leader John Lawe agreed to go
back under a much lower wage agree-
ment and under penalties from the
Taylor Law, which is an anti-strike law.
The consequence was that Lawe suc-
cessfully impressed on the workforce
that if you strike, you will lose. One of
the major reasons why he got away with
this whole campaign has a lot to do with
Ronald Reagan.
When the air controllers union went
out on strike last year, Ronald Reagan
smashed that union. And leaders like
John Lawe instructed the transit work-
ers that what happened to the air
controllers will happen to you. So he
forced us to accept in our last contract
binding arbitration by the government.
Fight for Power!
I ran on a campaign for president of
my local because this kind of leadership
can never defend the most basic interests
of the American working class, nor the
basic interests of workers anywhere in
the world. I ran primarily on the right to
strike, on the right of labor to use its
organization and the only weapon it has
to defend its interests. I also linked my
campaign to the fight against the racist
policies of the city administration, since
most of the most critical elements of the
workforce are black.
The union today is typically por-
trayed as lazy and stupid and that this is
primarily the reason for the run-dlJwn
New York City transit system. There is a
case which I raised in my campaign over
the closing of a hospital [Sydenham]
Le Bolchevik
Guest speaker Ed Kartsen addresses educational conference of French
Trotskyists.
allowed him to bleed to
death in the cab. Or to put it in simple
language, he was killed by the Transit
Authority.
I and a handful of other militants
decided to do something about this. It
was our intention to close down the
entire transit system for Jesse Cole's
funeral. And we were also determined to
organize the entire union to get out that
day in respect for Jesse Cole. This was
important because we didn't want any
individual militants to be victimized if
they acted on their own. But our union
leadership went on another kind of
campaign; they went on a counter-
campaign to get everybody to work that
day. About 200 of us showed up to the
funeral, and the system continued to
run. This is because of the leadership of
our union, not because of the many
hundreds of militant workers who felt a
deep sense of outrage at what happened.
Our leadership plays the role of a
middleman, as typically union bu-
reaucrats do, between management and
the workforce. They are the voice
of management inside the workers
movement.
Kartsen chairs
mass anti-Nazi
rally in Chicago,
27 June.
\\ .\
\',
\'l
\'''r \"1'
.P'

that he could drop dead in his black
robes. that he would stay out on strike
until it was successful, until it won.
Mike Quill died just after he got out of
jail. The strike was solid and the result
was that the Transport Workers Union
won the settlement that broke the record
as far as wage increases and other
demands, far ahead of any union
throughollt the United States at the
time. It put the union in a very powerful
position and left the workers with the
feeling that they have the ability to fight
around their interests using their own
organizations and could win.
But today this situation is no longer
the case. Gains which the workers have
won as a result of that strike have now
been almost entirely hacked away. An
example of this is what occurred with a
black motorman by the name of Jesse
Cole. This was a motorman who was
killed as a result of management
incompetence. He was instructed by the
management of the transport system to
ignore the signal safety on the rail. As a
result, his train crashed into another
train that was sitting just ahead. Jesse
Cole's cab was crushed and he was
seriously injured. The head of the
Metropolitan Transit Authority imme-
diately went on television to explain to
everyone why it was this motorman's
fault that this accident had occurred.
Instead of organizing an emergency
rescue squad, he spent the money of the
transport system on organizing this
campaign against Jesse Cole. He had the
power to turn off the third rail power to
the transport system, which was neces-
sary to allow the rescue squad to go onto
the tracks. The power was left on for
over an hour after it was known that the
accident had occurred. So Jesse Cole
did not die for any other reason than the
:?:
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o
As part of a campaign of protest
against Ronald Reagan's European tour
last month to heat the anti-Sodet war
drums, the internatioNal Spartacist
tendency organized public meetings in
six European cities on the theme "The
Main Enemy Is at Ho'"e.''' We print
helm..> edited excerpts of ihe speech by
guest speaker Ed Karfsen, a black
American trade unionist, to the Paris
meeting.
* * * * *
tinOritie 3-
Us (J
,
the Na:tis
So, Reagan is here in Europe to
realign and harden up his anti-Soviet
alliance. He's instructing them that
despite the pressure from members of
various peace movements composed, I
assume, of great numbers of people who
don't exactly like the idea of glowing,
that they'd better get in line with the
leader of international counterrevolu-
tion, that is, with U.S. imperialism's war
drive. They had better get in line with
the nuclear destruction of the USSR.
What I want to talk about is what
Reagan's anti-Soviet war drive means
for the American working class. I am a
member of Transport Workers Union
Local 100 in New York City. This is a
union which organizes transit workers,
those who run the trains and buses. This
union keeps New York City, the center
of international finance, running. My
union went out on strike in 1966, a
successful strike that set a precedent for
unions throughout the United States. Its
leader, a president by the name of Mike
Quill, found out that he was dying and
so he decided to marry his mistress and
call a strike, a strike that he had been
threatening for some time. He closed
down the city, the courts threw him in
jail because it is illegal for the transit
unions to strike, and he told the judge
6 WORKERS VANGUARD
WV Photo
Reagan "rollback" targets everyone. Some of 12,000 fired air controllers
shown here marching in Washington last September 19.
walk out of town, although there were
some injuries to these Nazis. The police
rushed in to defend them and help them
escape. The state played the role of
protecting the fascists, because they
have a perspective to use those fascists
as a weapon against labor, against
blacks, the poor and minorities.
Capitalism Means
Black Oppression
There is a political tendency in the
United States expressed again by the
Communist Party which calls for
"banning the Klan," that is, laws by the
bourgeois government to make organi-
zations like the Nazis and the Ku Klux
Klan illegal. In the context of Reagan's
America this strategy is viewed widely as
lunatic, particularly since Reagan is
carrying out aspects of the Ku Klux
Klan's program himself, and [because
of] the way anti-"extremist" laws have
been used in the past, that is, primarily
against militants and leftists. As was
demonstrated in the 1950s in the
McCarthy period, things like the Smith
Act were used against the then-
revolutionary Socialist Workers Party,
and against the Communist Party, which
supported the :::reation of this law.
Now I want to raise just one more
example. During the civil rights move-
ment in the United States Martin Luther
King and the Democratic Party pushed
this idea that black people have to use
the same kind of non-violent resistance
as Gandhi used. The objective of this
pacifism was to embarrass your enemy
with your blood, in other words, if you
are beaten on the streets you shouldn't
raise your hands in defense or strike
back in any way, but allow the racists to
beat you. This is the liberal tradition
which is endorsed by the Communist
Party, Socialist Workers Party and all
those parties which can be termed
social-democratic in the United States.
This policy also has the expression of
calling for the federal government to
intervene in cases of racist violence in
order to protect blacks.
In 1965 in Selma, Alabama Martin
Luther King had a march for voting
rights where he relied on the federal
troops, state troops and the local police
to defend the march against Klan terror.
The result was that a black woman was
shot to death by the Ku Klux Klan with
the full knowledge, there again, of an
FBI agent. The FBI agent wrote, in fact,
a book talking about his entire experi-
ence inside the Ku Klux Klan and every
time he reported that the Klan was
about to carry out an act of racist terror,
he says that his own bosses told himjust
to go along and observe. This was in
contrast to the FBI's infiltration of
groups like the Black Panthers, where
they set up the execution of Black
Panther leaders, like Fred Hampton in
Chicago, who was murdered in his sleep.
The attacks on black people, the
attacks on civil rights are proof that the
liberal lie of reforming the capitalist
government for black liberation is
nothing more than an illusion. The
oppression of black people is as funda-
mental to American capitalism as is the
exploitation of labor, imperialist war
and their anti-Soviet war drive. Black
liberation is tied up [with] the liberation
of the entire American working class
from capitalist oppression.
Black people in the United States
constitute a race-color caste. That is,
blacks are concentrated in the industrial
working class, the semi-employed and
the army of the unemployed. This has
been the position of blacks ever since
Reconstruction was put into flames by
the Ku Klux Klan. The Civil War in the
United States, which was supposed to
free the slaves, what this war actually
meant for the rulers of America was a
war tokeep the Union together, keep the
South from seceding. There was no
continued on page 8
government to defend the citizens
against the fascists, these liberals had a
voice in the form of the local mayor by
the name of Coleman Young, a black
mayor. He threatened the blacks, trade-
union workers, the leftists all with arrest
if they showed up the day that the
fascists were to come. But that didn't
stop efforts to mobilize the black
community, the trade-union force. Five
hundred militants, many from an auto
plant called River Rouge, showed up
fully prepared to deal with any fascists
that might come and, as well, fully
prepared to go to jail. They were the
most militant workers throughout
Detroit, the potential leadership of the
entire black and white workers of
Detroit. The handful of fascist punks
understood that there would be no
possibility for a fascist demonstration
on that spot that day and if they did the
consequences would be dire to their
health.
This was a workers victory. The
lesson was that only the working class
under a militant leadership can success-
fully stop the fascists. I'm proud to say
that I chaired that rally and it was also to
the credit of the Spartacists of the
United States who initiated it. Nothing
was clearer that day than that the
mobilized force of the working class was
the force that could smash fascism.
This year there was a mobilization in
Ann Arbor, just outside Detroit. There
a group called the SS Action Group,
another fascist organization, wanted to
demonstrate around the slogans of "Kill
Commies" and endorsement of Ronald
Reagan's policy in EI Salvador. There
were two mobilizations, one initiated
again by the American section of the
international Spartacist tendency and
another by the liberals, the latter to
demonstrate to "ignore" the Nazis. The
results in Ann Arbor were that UAW
locals around that region, transport
workers around that region, as well as
AFSCME workers, endorsed the cam-
paign to mobilize on the spot where the
Nazis said they were going to come. So
that day, a crowd of 2,000 students,
trade unionists and leftists appeared on
the spot where the Nazis said they were
going to come. When the Nazis drove by
in a car they looked at this kind of
mobilization, and went over to the
site of the "ignore the Nazis"
demonstration.
Sections of the "Stop the Nazis"
demonstration heard about this and
about 1,500 of these demonstrators
gathered around these few Nazis and
expressed their outrage at their [the
Nazis'] provocation. Many projectiles
were thrown in their direction. It's
unfortunate that they were able to even

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Detroit, November 1979-Black workers say: "The Klan Won't Ride in the
Motor City!"
head. The Ku Klux Klan got off scot-
free when the trial came up. In fact the
whole incident was videotaped and this
was presented at the trial, but it did not
stop the racist terrorists from getting off
scot-free. And the message behind
allowing the Ku Klux Klan to get off for
carrying out this vicious act of terror in
broad daylight is that it's OK to kill
blacks, reds, trade-union organizers,
that the government gives sanction to
this kind of activity.
The reason for this is that there is an
enormous amount of unemployment
taking place in the United States today.
In particular, in the Midwest, places like
Detroit. where there is a massive black
working-class population being thrown
onto the streets, auto factories being
closed down. Because of attacks against
social services by the Reagan adminis-
tration many of these blacks face no
means to survive, that is, no welfare.
These masses of blacks are becoming
more and more the targets of groups like
the Ku Klux Klan and Nazis in a very
real way. Ku Klux Klan and Nazi acts of
terror have increased more than 425
percent according to the Justice Depart-
ment over the last few years.
It is fortunate that the Nazis and the
Ku Klux Klan have met some resistance
of late in the United States to their terror
activity. When the Nazis and the Ku
Klux Klan wanted to demonstrate in
downtown Detroit in celebration of the
Greensboro massacre, there was a
mobilization of blacks, workers and
leftists on the same spot in order to stop
them. The important lesson to learn is
that the same liberals who request the
labor/Black Mobilization to
Smash Klan/Nazi Terror
I want to now talk about the situation
with respect to blacks in the United
States. Reagan is on a campaign against
labor and he's also on a campaign
against the few remaining gains of the
civil rights movement. This is resulting
in increased activity on the part of
fascists. The program of the Ku Klux
Klan, which is the home-grown Ameri-
can fascist organization, is to drive
blacks back into slave labor. Reagan is
carrying out their program from the
White House in terms of destruction of
the gains of the civil rights movement.
The difference the Klan with him is
that he's not creating mass death camps
and organizing slave labor on a massive
scale. Of late the most notorious case of
Klan terror was what occurred in
Greensboro, North Carolina, and I
want to briefly go into the implications
of this Greensboro massacre for Ameri-
can workers and blacks.
What happened there was the
massacre of leftists, trade-union organ-
izers, civil rights workers and a black
woman, with the knowledge and col-
laboration of the American govern-
ment. It is a documented fact that there
were federal agents in the car from
which the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazis
emerged. I think the results are generally
known, that the Ku Klux Klan and
Nazis opened fire on this demonstration
and murdered in broad daylight five
people, shooting them in the chest and
The result of this binding arbitration
was that some major gains of the
Transport Workers Union were taken
away by the government. And this has
widely angered many transit workers.
While John Lawe advocates the
binding of the workers to the govern-
ment with respect to the contract it is
also the binding of the working class
politically to the ruling class through the
Democratic Party. He's on a campaign
to force union members to pay a
contribution to various Democratic
Party politicians as the way to get rid of
the anti-strike laws. And most of the
American fake-left support this same
strategy of reliance on the left wing of
the Democratic Party. As I said, I was
the only one to fight both for the
perspective of a workers party as well as
for the right to strike in the last election.
The Communist Party supported a
candidate running for the presidency of
Local 100 who ran on a programagainst
going out on strike. The Communist
Party-supported candidate, as a matter
of fact, voted an endorsement of John
Lawe's giving up of our policy in the
union of "No contract, no work." Only
afterwards, when the elections were over
and after the negotiations were overthey
came out against binding arbitration.
23 JULY 1982 7

Regan/Newsweek
National Guard tanks rumble through Detroit to suppress black ghetto
explosion in 1967.
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For Revolutionary
Integrationism
Summary
This is' a very interesting discussion.
The question on how black people
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toward total annihilation. So the ruling
class gave the masses of blacks
absolutely nothing-they fought for it
by reliance on their own force and the
only way it can be defended is by
reliance on their own force. And that's
why the liberation of black people must
be a central part of the liberation of the
American working class through
socialist revolution.
For a Class-Struggle
Workers Partyl
Questioner asks about the call for a
workers party in the United States.
First, on the workers party. As some
of the comrades here have expressed,
the American working class has no
party at all. The two major political
parties are both bourgeois parties. The
leadership of the American trade-union
movement is in tight collaboration with
the Democratic Party. When the Ameri-
can working class explodes in respect to
labor actions, the opportunity will exist
to go beyond the labor bureaucrats. The
workers will no longer want to listen to
them any more. And the opportunity
exists for working-class militants to
form a party that will fight in a
revolutionary way for a workers govern-
ment. That is, a party based not on
reform, not on social democracy (unlike
the workers parties that have been
formed here in France and in Britain),
that is, a party that is pro-strike, pro-
working-class, a party that is for the
overturn of capitalism and the establish-
ment of a workers government.
This is the type of workers party that
we talk about, and we raise this
concretely around issues like the smash-
ing of anti-strike laws, establishing
strike committees-every opportunity,
in other words, to raise a strategy of
workers revolution, which emerges
concretely in every sharp working-class
struggle.
Briefly, one more example. In order
for the Transport Workers Union towin
in New York City. we have to strike
directly against a Municipal Assistance
Corporation which is made up of some
of the most powerful banks and trusts in
the world. In order to win such a strike,
the most effective strategy is to demand
the expropriation of these banks, for
free subways that are clean, decent and
nice to ride on--an issue which in New
York City would mobilize many mil-
lions of workers. In other words, it is
necessary to carry out a political fight
that would galvanize the workforce of
the city. And that fight must end in the
workers either attaining a sense of
power through winning the strike, and a
sense for a need for a political organiza-
tion to express that power, or it will end
in the defeat of workers because of being
sold out or isolated by the political
power of the bourgeois state.
up American nuclear power. So Reagan
is here going around Europe claiming to
be the biggest peacemaker, and not only
is he a big peacemaker, but he's much
more peaceful than Brezhnev, and
because Brezhnev is not as peaceful as
him, Brezhnev must be blown up.
It's only through the active defense of
the gains of the USSR by the American
working class and by working classes
around the world that it is possible for
the imperialist policy of a Third World
War to be stopped. And this means that
there must' be socialist revolution in the
United States. And there must be
political revolution in the USSR in
order to defend the gains of the Russian
Revolution. It is the same issue as the
defense of the gains of my union: as I
have to fight to get rid of my bureaucra-
cy so too the Russian workers must fight
to overthrow their bureaucracy. So, all
workers around the world have a stake
in the unconditional military defense of
the USSR against imperialism.
Blacks, Labor-Rely on
Your Own Strengthl
Discussion period
Questioner asks about the role of
Martin Luther King in the 1960s civil
rights movement.
It was not Martin Luther King that
won those gains. It was the masses of
blacks who were taking to the streets to
fight for those gains that won them.
What Martin Luther King did was to
step into that struggle, disarm it and sell
a few reforms as the price for his
disarming it. For example there were
laws which were supposed to result in
integration of schools, integration of
housing, integration of higher education
which were the selling points of the civil
rights movement. Once the groups of
agricultural black workers in the South
and industrial black workers were
demobilized, when they were no longer
out in the streets arming and organizing,
these rights were taken away.
For example in Boston in 1972, the
[school] busing program was being
attacked by mobs of racists on the
streets, by the beating up of black
children and the destruction of buses.
Now this right of busing was supposed
to be a right already won by Martin
Luther King. But the racists on the
streets were fighting to take it back. The
only possible force to defend that right
was effective. organized workers and
blacks of that city. As a matter of fact
I went to Boston myself into a
demonstration to demand the defense of
the black children that were under
attack in the city. But the liberals in that
city had a countermobilization there
too. They called for reliance on the
police and for federal troops, just like in
the civil rights movement.
The result is that today there is no
more busing program-the racists
succeeded in terrorizing enough blacks
and burning enough buses that the
courts have rescinded further busing
programs. Throughout the United
States, the whole program of
integration of schools has been rolled
back and Reagan is pushing it back
310
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want freedom for anybody either in
Poland or in Russia, he is not against the
repression against the masses there.
Reagan has something in store for the
workers in Russia and Poland similar to
what he has executed on the American
working class: goodies like unemploy-
ment, fascism and racism are widely
understood to be the intent behind his
calls for "freedom, liberty and justice."
September 19 was not only the largest
working-class demonstration in Ameri-
can history, it was one of the most
integrated in history. It was so big that it
scared the bureaucrats themselves-
they weren't expecting a half a million.
Many workers came to that demonstra-
tion not with the intent of a token show
of force, but willing to close down that
city and to offer concrete acts of labor
action to bring Reagan down. Many
were asking why their unions hadn't
gone out in support of PATCO, why the
airplanes were still getting fueled, why
they were still getting repaired, because
they wanted that strike to win and they
knew from the power that was demon-
strated that day that they had the ability
to win. The demonstration in Washing-
ton was critical because in America the
only force that can bring Reagan down
is the force of labor. It's the only force,
under a leadership that is determined to
overthrow capitalism, that can stop
World War Ill.
The Stalinists, whose international
policy of detente, which reflects their
policy of "ban the Klan" in the States,
will never bring peace. Because it was
under previous administrations that
detente was used as a cover for building
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(continued from page 7)
original intent to free the slaves neces-
sarily but it became an important
political issue during the war which was
instrumental i'n the winning of the
North. The winning of the war was the
only primary objective of the Northern
capitalists.
After the war, the Ku Klux Klan was
allowed to carry out a campaign which
instituted segregation. This campaign of
racist oppression which was instituted at
that time remains in effect to this very
day. The civil rights movement was
supposed to get rid of this institutional-
ized oppression of black people and
partially did in the South. But today,
black people find themselves in a worse
economic situation than before the civil
rights movement. So nothing can be
more apparent than that without the
overturn of American capitalism which
perpetuates racism in America, black
people will continue to be oppressed.
Defend Blacks,
Defend the Soviet Union!
So today we find that black people are
supposed to go along with Reagan's
campaign in America for "freedom" for
workers in Poland from oppression.
Reagan, who is carrying out a campaign
against civil rights, who is encouraging
the mobilization of fascist terror, is
supposed to be the leader of the
"freedom" of masses of workers. But
black people in general never cried for
Solidarnose, despite the fact that the
entire liberal left, the Democratic Party,
the Republicans all the way to the
fascists, all shed many tears for Solidar-
nose. It was too vivid in their minds that
there is massive unemployment and
impoverishment in the black communi-
ty; they observed Haitians being herded
into concentration camps.
Masses of American workers didn't
go for this pro-Solidarnose campaign
either because Reagan is supposed to be
the fighter for workers "freedom" after
he smashed an American trade union.
There were only a handful of trade-
union bureaucrats who came out to
demonstrate against the government
crackdown in Poland-and this in
contrast to half a million workers who
came out on September 19 last year to
protest against Reagan. Reagan doesn't
8 WORKERS VANGUARD
Minority Press Covers
Chicago Anti-Nazi Protest
00N1'LU1' IVLY '1_ 5
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tI......-d to Oefud tile JIIDe r1 c...a..ittee pIU&ed
rirhll 01 PJ"" BlacU .... outthattlJeN"'tarawted
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0I_1Wou -... Hit!er.lovendidn'tpttheir
prwnt at tlJe ..,,.. Committeii' 1pOIk..m&Jl
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eat. UIlit! AUloO Worbn .... III imporl.aat dol,. -..
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WillyHarriaaDdJoet-

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ed Auto Workers Local 6).
Cliff "Cowboy" Mezzo (Vice-
President. Steelworkers
Local iOl0), and Willy Harris
and Joe Lamm (Secretary-
Treasurer and Vice-President
of SEIU Local 372.)
The Call to Action by the
June 27 Committee pointed
out that the Nazis targeted
Gay Pride Day because they
know that homosexuals are
the weakest link in their chain
of terror," But the Hitler-lov-
ers didn't get their way.
Committee spokesman Gene
Shofner said in closing the
victorious rally: "This was an
important day because the
people of Chicago came out in
thousands to oppose the Nazis
here. The people of Chicago
said, "No. we will not allow
ourselves to be pieeemealed
to death!"
Party's betrayal in the 1930s became
Pan-Africanists and anti-communists.
Now what sets the conditions for the
class struggle in America right now, as
some of the comrades have mentioned,
is that American society is no longer the
great economic power that it used to be.
If there are steak lines in Poland it
cannot compare to the cheese lines in
America, where hundreds upon hun-
dreds of poor people last winter stood
out in the cold for hours to get a chunk
of stale cheese. And this is more and
more the situation with the masses in
America, which still has the image to the
rest of the world as rolling in gold. It's
no longer the case; the American
economy is on a sharp decline and the
American government is going towards
war.
So it is that the obligation on the part
of the American working class must be
to stop the United States from going to
war, which means to stop the anti-
Soviet war drive and to defend the gains
of the October Revolution. It is widely
understood that this most powerful
economy in the world is now going the
road of Great Britain. And so too will
France and Germany, and so too will
Japan, unless the crisis of capitalism is
resolved in either of two ways. It will be
resolved either in barbarism through
nuclear war or it will be resolved by
socialism, that is, with the international
seizure of power in all countries by the
workers of all countries.
calling for the protest were
distributed in the\ Chicago
area over the last two weeks.
As the Nazis left. Don
Andrews, a spokesman for the
Committee and member of the
Spartacist League Central
Committee, proclaimed to the
cheering crowd, "We did it!
We prevented them from
carrying out their provoca-
tion!" This was a victory for
all decent people of Chicago.
said Andrews. Someone had
to stop these would-be killers,
and the Spartacist League
"Mobilized labor and all sec-
tions of the oppressed to
defend the rights of gays.
blacks and Jews in this city."
11 was a diciplined and
powerful show of force
against the Nazis. Meml?ers of
dozens of area unions were
present at the demonstration.
,and speakers included Norm
Roth (former President Unit-
Smashing success
Thousands move to stop Nazis in Chicago
because the Communist Party in the
United States under the instructions of
Stalin liquidated their exemplary work
to fight against racist oppression and
fight against the imperialist war, and
instead subordinated themselves to the
imperialist war and in support of the
racist policies in the military and in
American society. In fact when a
demonstration was called for Washing-
ton against racist practices in the army
and in American society during the war,
the Communist Party campaigned
against it.
So it was widely believed among
black Communist Party members that
the Communist Party had become
dominated and controlled by racism. Of
course it was, Stalinism and Stalinist
policy that made blacks feel [betrayed
by] the Communist Party. And many
workers who were told not to strike by
the Communist Party felt the same way.
For those who point to the American
working class as anti-communist, one of
the reasons is the activities of the
Stalinist Communist Party. It was
possible for the McCarthy period right-
wingers to throw Communist Party
members out of the unions because they
mobilized militants who had authority
amongst their fellow workers who
would say, "Where the hell were you,
Communist Party, when we needed you,
when we had to go out on strike-you
told us not to." And many of the blacks
who had experienced the Communist
rejected the Gay Pride parade
organizers' call to ignore the
Nazis. As the Nazis shouted
death' threats against homo-
sexuals, blacks and commun-
ists, they were drowned out
by the crowd chanting "Chic-
ago is a union town, Chicago is
a black town, Chicago is a gay
town..No room for Nazis!"
After an hour the Hilterites
gave up and were ushered out
by the police to a thunderous
roar of "Nazis Out! Nazis
Out!"
Numerous unionist. blacks,
Jewish concentration camp
survivors, gays and other
individuals representing a
wide cross-section of the
Chicago community endorsed
the demonstration called by
the June 27 Committee
Against the Nazis, which was
initiated and organized by the
Spartacist League, a Marxist
organization. More than
250.000 Committee leaflets

1""""""'.' .1

,..
CHICAGO.--It was the lar-
gest anti-facist demonstration
in the area in deeades.-
Waving angry first and chant-
ing "No Hitlers in Chicago--
Stop the Nazis Now!" more
than 3.000 demonstrators
mobolized to prevent two
dozen Nazi stormtroopers in
black and brown uniforms
from entering Lincoln Park
Sunday.
The fascists had said they
would stage a provocation
against the Gay Pride parade
in the park's "public forum"
area. But when the Nazis
arrived the area was already
occupied by protestors or-
ganized by the June 2:1
Committee Against the Nazis.
Instead the swastika-waving
punks clustered behind a
chain-link fence in a nearby
parking lot., proteeted by
hundreds of Chicago police.
including mounted police.
Several thousanct people
....
metro News 2&4
WOllTH
"ThelovolvedNewspopet" _

Juljj 3. 1982 .
Greek-American daily, Prioni:
"Mass Anti-Nazi Demonstration"
_-,--,__
I -n

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Black Liberation Through
Socialist Revolution
Just one other point to conclude. This
point intersects both black nationalism
as well as the history of the American
Communist Party. A Pan-Africanist by
the name of Padmore uses a proof that
communist organizations are racist by
going back to the Communist Party's
activities during the war [WWII] in
America. Why they say it's racist is
sian wound up either an evangelist or a
member of the Democratic Party. The
best expression of the black nationalists
was those nationalists who attempted to
win over the workers in Detroit. But
here, although they won tremendous
authority from both the black and white
workers, their commitment to black
nationalism led them to betray the fight
for a militant revolutionary workers
party. And instead there was a fight in
their own organizations which resulted
in sections abandoning the working
class and seeking to split off black
workers from white workers in order to
make community work the most impor-
tant struggle. This flows from the
conception that the main division of
society for them was race and not class.
So, in America, only a strategy of
revolutionary integration which unites
the black and white working class
against all forms of class and race
oppression can lead to a workers
revolution.
became integrated into the industrial
proletariat is the first one I wanted to
deal with. Blacks from the rural
American South provided the industrial
North with cheap labor. In fact, the fact
that blacks are a source of cheap labor is
one of the motivating forces for
maintaining black oppression. The first
mass migration occurred during the
labor shortage of the First World War
when large numbers of workers from the
North were sent here to Europe to fight
the imperialist war. The second mass
migration occurred during the Second
World War where labor shortages again
opened up a need for large numbers of
industrial workers.
But blacks are also, as I have stated
before, used as a political weapon, as a
scapegoat to be blamed for the capitalist
crisis. When many of the soldiers
returned from Europe by 1919 there was
massive rioting over jobs in the streets of
cities like East St. Louis and Chicago.
During these riots, black workers were
attacked on the streets of these cities and
intimidated to the point where it was
evident that if there was any resistance
to their unemployment and their pover-
ty, they were to be the victims of racist
terror. A similar event occurred in 1943
in the streets of Detroit against black
workers of that city.
So this all goes to show that black
people are placed in a strategic position
in the American working class and have
a deep interest in revolution in the
United States. And black workers have
a lot less illusions in the "democratic"
character of the American government,
in any kind of egalitarian character to
bourgeois society, and are much more
open to a revolutionary strategy. But
this of course doesn't mean that under
conditions of despair that blacks will
not turn to reactionary politics. During
the period of the 1919 riots, the Ku Klux
Klan marched through the city of
Washington numbering near the mil-
lions. Under these conditions there was
a massive "back to Africa" movement,
which became popular amongst Ameri-
can blacks. But because black national-
ism accepts the racist status quo, blacks
can't fight for their liberation under the
politics of nationalism. As a matter of
fact, the head of the "back to Africa"
movement invited the Ku Klux Klan to
speak to one of their conferences.
The same causes for the "back to
Africa" movement during the 1920s
were the cause for the growth of black
nationalism after the civil rights move-
ment. It was frustration with the
limitations and the apparent impotence
of Martin Luther King's strategy and
the policy of passive resistance that won
masses of black people over to black
separatism. The thing that rang the toll
of the end of the civil rights movement
was a number of black riots which
occurred in the mid-1960s. That is,
blacks in the mass would no longer
accept limitations of passive resistance
and continually being the victims of
racist terror. But all of these riots were
viciously suppressed-tanks in one case
were rolled down the streets of
Detroit-and 50 blacks were killed. The
fact of massive disenchantment with the
civil rights movement led to the growth
of black nationalist organizations.
There were two tendencies amongst
the black nationalists: one was for
what's called black capitalism, and the
other, represented by the Panthers, was
called revolutionary nationalism. Those
who were for black capitalism proved so
blatantly reactionary that their organi-
zations quickly became ineffective and
prominent leaders of this movement
found themselves in the Democratic
Party. The Black Panthers on the other
hand attempted to carry out a revolu-
tion based on the unemployed of the
ghetto. They armed themselves and they
began to march with arms and advocate
going up against the state. The conse-
quence was that virtually every Black
Panther leader was either jailed, killed
or if he managed to survive through the
whole procedure of bourgeois repres-
23 JULY 1982
9
D r o ~ Charges Against Gerrv Clark!
COPS Jail Union Member at CWA Convention
WV Photo
CWA member Gerry Clark, arrested for leafletting at CWA convention.
DETROIT-City police intervened in
a Communications Workers of Ameri-
ca (CWA) convention here July 15 by
arresting a union member for distrib-
uting an open letter to the convention
from one of the delegates. Gerry Clark,
a phone worker in CWA Local9415 in
Oakland, California and a registered
guest at the convention, was marched
away with his hands cuffed behind his
back and charged with disorderly
conduct. He was released more than
four hours later. Clark told the press,
"My local union delegation raised the
$100 bail and sent my local vice
president down to get me out."
This attack on the union was
reported in both the Oakland Tribune
and the San Francisco Chronicle. The
Tribune article said, "Clark is a
member of the Militant Action Caucus
(MAC), which advocates militant
labor action and an end to the union's
traditional support of the Democratic
Party." A MAC press release on the
arrest stated:
"Numerous delegates to the
convention have expressed their out-
rage at this interference in union
affairs and attack on the basic right of
all trade unionists to express their
SWP...
(continued from page 12)
bureaucratic organization (e.g., consid-
er the "disloyalty" purge kicked off in
May 1980, which unleashed a series of
witchhunts so fierce that the leadership
had to call a halt in September 1981).
Still the "age purge" (removing from
leadership those in the SWP cadre older
than Barnes) was a move against not
merely potential loci of political opposi-
tion but against anything left in the
party that might have served as an
alternative role model in a party shaped
ever more narrowly in Jack Barnes'
image.
We hold no brieffor the current SWP
oppositions. Nobody who swallowed
Khomeini's Persian-chauvinist, anti-
woman, anti-worker "revolution" can
credibly claim to be an "international-
ist," nor would very many of the SWP's
former fans of sellout Mine Workers
union "reformer" Arnold Miller be
recruitable to a perspective of authentic
Trotskyist work in the labor movement.
Still it's an ugly sight to watch Barnes
axing the remaining veterans of the old
SWP in evident fear that they-who
have forgotten the content of Trotsky-
ism long since-might prove an impedi-
ment to sloughing off remaining vestiges
of the old formulae. They deserve better
than abuse at the hands of the Barnes
clique amidst a chorus of contempt from
Barnes' cadre of arrogant latter-day
YPSLs.
Out with the Old, on the Outs
with the New
The latest Guardian articles on the
SWP's troubles remarked gleefully that
the party "has been quietly dropping
overboard some of its Trotskyist bag-
gage." In fact, they're merely chucking
the empty suitcases, the paper orthodox
positions which have been kept safely
locked away in dusty closets. The knee-
jerk objections from those who main-
tain a sentimental attachment to Trot-
skyism are likely to give Barnes less
trouble than the collapse of years of
grandiose promises which has party
members voting with their feet.
Historically, especially in the move-
ment against the Vietnam War, the SWP
was able to flex some visible organiza-
tional muscle within the popular frontist
coalitions it hoped to be the "best
10
viewpoints.... Protests demanding
that all charges be dropped have been
lodged with the Detroit Police
Department."
A MAC spokesman told WV that the
day after the arrest 265 members
(including 15 stewards) of Local 9415
sent a protest telegram to Detroit
mayor Coleman Young demanding
that "the fake charges against Brother
Clark be dropped." The telegram also
noted. "CWA National President
Glenn Watts today affirmed the right
of Clark's group to participate fUlly in
the affairs of the union, saying that
whether we agree or disagree with each
union member's politics, free speech
exists in this country and must be
respected." A resolution demanding
that the charges be dropped was also
unanimously passed by Local 9415 on
July 20.
During the 1979 convention here
Secret Service agents abducted MAC
delegate and Spartacist League sup-
porter Jane Margolis as she prepared
to speak against Jimmy Carter and for
a workers party. This outrage was met
with a storm of protest: scores of
convention delegates as well as hun-
builders" of. But times have changed
and of late SWP bootlicking has reaped
nothing but the contempt which is the
just reward of craven opportunism. The
SWP has long been subjected to red-
baiting attacks in NOW, the main
bourgeois-led women's organization.
The feminists who line up with the
Moral Majority's anti-porn campaigns
take the SWP's "Trotskyism" at face
value, and want no part of anything red
or even slightly pink. Though the
Militant occasionally offers a timorous
attack on NOW's pro-Democratic Party
leadership, the other equally wretched
"coalitions" in which the party seeks to
work have been spared.
This hasn't prevented actual and
attempted purges of SWPers. For
example, when the Committee in
Solidarity with the People of EI Salva-
dor (CISPES) was first formed, SWPers
were right there. But when the heat came
down from the CISPES' godfathers-
the FDR's Political and Diplomatic
Commission-SWP members in
CISPES politely resigned from leader-
ship rather than provoke a split in "the
movement," but now there's a full-scale
witchhunt against the SWP in New
York CISPES. And it's tough sledding
too in the National Black Independent
Political Party, which the SWP pro-
motes as the greatest thing for black
people since Martin Luther King and
never mind the anti-communist
expulsions.
The greatest disasters, though, have
occurred in the unions. After a long
hiatus, the SWP leadership had redis-
covered the industrial proletariat
(coincidentally with the collapse of the
sectoralist "mass movements" which
were the previous arena for the SWP's
opportunist appetites). The way the
SWP went about the "turn" could be
termed "Gidget Goes to Garment."
Under the slogan of "talking socialism,"
industrialized SWPers have functioned
more like YSAers running a campus
election campaign. There's no mystery
in this: the SWP's union work is directed
by Barnesite hacks, a bunch whose only
credential is that they can spell the word
"factory." And through his bureaucratic
maneuvers, Barnes has seen to it that the
old-timers-who remember a bit about
the need to patiently win authority as
workers and militant unionists-will
not get in the way. Harry DeBoer, one of
dreds of other phone workers immedi-
ately demanded a formal apology from
the White House. In June 1980 the
Secret Service did turn over such an
apology and $3,500 in settlement of a
suit brought by Margolis. Margolis
the "Minneapolis 18" tried and impris-
oned under the Smith Act, objected to
"talking socialism" and quoted a 1941
SWP plenum report by James P.
Cannon: "Comrades were cautioned ...
[to] be careful, integrate themselves, get
some training in their trade, some
standing as mechanics, workmen, etc.
... If you conduct yourself in such a way
that you get bounced out before you
really get in, you cannot carryon any
fruitful trade union work" ("The Party's
Sectarian Trade Union Policy" by
Harry DeBoer et aI., SWP Discussion
Bulletin Vol. 37, No. 23, July 1981).
That was it for DeBoer in Barnes' party;
it was all over but the shouting.
The SWP insists that the hair-raising
story of what happened at the Jim
Walter Brookwood mine No. 4 in
Alabama was not a correct application
of the "talking socialism" policy. We
suggest our readers draw their own
conclusions from Political Committee
reporter Ken Shilman's "Report on the
National Miners Fraction" (Party Or-
ganizer Vol. 4. No. I, April 1980):
"We did not collectively sit down,
carefully size up the situation we found
ourselves in, and figure out how to help
the union win this battle. If we had
started there, I think that after only two
weeks in the mine when we did not
know a lot about the struggles. and had
not had time to win respect for ourselves
as unionists or as political people, much
less establish ourselves as socialists-we
would have decided not to sign griev-
ances. write articles. or sell the Militant
in the bars around the mine....
"When two comrades. Sara and Ellen,
got hired at Brookwood in June. 1979.
we walked into a war taking place
between Jim Walter mining company
and the UMWA. Jim Walter was out to
destroy the local. ...
"By writing the kind of Militant article
we did. quoting extensively from a
closed union meeting and signing it with
the names of comrades who had barelr
started wo;k. we set into motion an
entire train of events....
"That issue of the Militant gave the
company and its right-wing agents the
handle they needed. The red scare and
violence that followed our sales of the
Militant changed the relationship of
forces dramaticallv.... What the com-
pany had thus far' failed to do with its
attacks on women's rights and other
tactics. it pulled off with anti-
communism-it divided the union....
"Our actions also led to serious victimi-
zation. Comrades are familiar with the
violence directed against our comrades
that eventually forced us to decide that
Sara and Ellen should not continue to
donated the entire cash award to the
CWA Defense Fund.
Any government intervention in the
labor movement is an attack on all
working people! Drop the charges
against Gerry Clark!
work at the mine.
"But we were not the onlr VIctims.
Others had their cars fire-bombed, tires
slashed. and lives jeopardized. The
climate of terror hurt evervone intimi-
dated everyone. The people who came
to our defense were good people,
courageous, and they helped us at great
personal fisk.... " (emphasis added)
The only item of importance omitted
from this account is the fact that many
of the victims of the violence touched off
by the SWP's incredible stupidity-
people who were struggling "at great
personal risk" before the SWP dropped
in and after it departed-were black.
Of course this atrocity was ammuni-
tion for the Weinstein/Henderson
opposition at the last SWP convention,
arguing for a more sensible application
of the SWP's social-democratic line.
That theirs is a rightist opposition based
on an economist penchant for "shop
floor" issues is shown by their failure to
distance themselves from SWP union
stupidity of rightist coloration, like the
way the SWP stuck with Mine Workers
president Miller throughout the bitter
1977-78 coal strike when Miller's con-
tracts were being made into bonfires in
the coalfields. Or take the case of SWP
spokesman Andrew Pulley, who the
SWP turned from a one-time antiwar
and black activist into a scab. During a
1978 strike at U.S. Steel's Gary plant, a
picket line was set up by the Brother-
hood of Railway and Airline Clerks-
one which BRAC officials asked other
unions to respect. That didn't stop
Andrew Pulley, then working at Gary,
from crossing the picket line and going
to work! The SWP's decision to run
Pulley as its 1981 presidential candidate
was certainly an example of stupidity
compounding cynical betrayal. But
we've never heard a peep of protest from
any of the "proletarian" critics in the
SWP.
Black People Need the SWP
Like a Hole in the Head
Despite the ominous growth of race-
terror groups like the Ku Klux Klan and
Nazis, nurtured by Reaganite anti-
Sovietism and attacks on labor and
minorities, the SWP clings to the liberal
notion of "exposing" the fascists' "bad
ideas" by debating them! As any
socialist should know, the KKK and
Nazis are not interested in "ideas"-
their program is action: lynching, fire-
WORKERS VANGUARD
TROTSKYIST LEAGUE OF CANADA
SPARTACIST LEAGUE LOCAL DIRECTORY
Cleveland
Box 91954
Cleveland, OH 44101
(216) 621-5138
the real names of SWP "fraternal co-
thinkers" in the United Secretariat
(USec) abroad, and god knows what
else. And for what? Ironically, as
reported in the 9 July Militant, in
hearings before the Senate Subcommit-
tee on Security and Terrorism, Senator
Jeremiah Denton named the SWP as an
organization which "clearly oppose[s]
our democratic ideals." The FBI and
CIA are being unleashed and out of
sheer vindictiveness they will certainly
go after the SWP, which has occasional-
ly embarrassed them considerably in the
course of the eight-year lawsuit. And
SWPers should remember those nota-
rized statements of membership they
filled out to help the party collect
damages. We suggested in a previous
article that these statements, constitut-
ing a full membership list, might have
been turned over to the court. We still
don't know if they were. You might ask
your leadership.
Among the dirty numbers the
Barnesites have pulled in their time, the
lying frame-up of ex-SWP member
Hedda Garza stands out. Even the
Militant's own 26 June 1981 article on
Garza's testimony during the "Water-
suit" refutes the article's headline which
claimed that Garza testified for the FBI.
Since Garza said nothing more than
Barnes himself said on the stand, the
Militant latched on to the government
attorney's charge that he had met
privately with Garza.
Why? Having only access to the
Militant and SWP internal bulletins, we
can only conjecture. Garza and her
comrades of the Internationalist Ten-
dency, the centrist minority in the SWP
which supported the USec minority line
of vicariously tailing guerrilla warfare,
were expelled in 1974 (on July 4th no
less) to prove to Judge Griesa that the
SWP would never tolerate anything
tainted with the suggestion of "terror-
ism." Perhaps the SWP went after
Garza so hard as a convenient way to
rebut the FBI's c\aiIn_,bet tbe '91
4
expulsion was merely a legal fiction.
Any SWPer with a shred of decency
should be appalled at the Militant's
charge that Garza was a fink. At the last
Oberlin convention, Spartacist com-
rades offered a free subscription to our
press to any SWPer who could come up
with any "evidence" other than the FBI
lawyer's tale; there were no takers.
There was however one lone SWPer
who dared to take up the defense of
Garza inside the party. In SWP Discus-
sion Bulletin Vol. 37, No. 26, July 1981,
Daniel Rosenshine wrote:
"During the discussion at the June 21
[1981] Brooklyn branch meeting two
comrades (when referring to the govern-
ment attorney's claim of having met
with Hedda Garza privately) asserted
that 'the government would not lie.'
This is a truly astounding assertion....
Even Hedda Garza's heated denials of
having attended such a meeting are
treated as 'plunging deeper' into
'perjury' ......
Our subscription offer still stands.
Even as the SWP drifted into a bad
way as a revolutionary organization,
embracing decisive cerctrist program-
matic elements as Cannon's leadership
gave way to that of Farrell Dobbs, many
subordinate elements of continuity in
personnel and practice still persisted.
But Jack Barnes climbed to power at no
little terminal cost to those deemed in
his way-compare successive National
Committee lists over the past ten years.
Probably the death of Joe Hansen in
1979 had a great deal to do with the
crumbling of the last facade (purely for
foreign consumption of course) of
Trotskyism. The latest "age purge"
represents the final obliteration of such
traces of the old SWP as still existed,
rather akin to the tidying up of the
Russian CP in 1936-38, a process
popularly called the Moscow Trials.
The only point of recognition between
then and now are the initials. All else is
different, a point now brought home to
the organizationally demised old-timers
regardless of how spinelessly they
sought to go along.
Will He or Won't He?
Ever since the SWP wrapped up its
"Watersuit," its central preoccupation
over eight years, last summer, we've
been curious what Judge Griesa would
decide. Certainly there was ample
evidence presented of violations of the
SWP's rights to function as a political
party: black bag jobs, informers, depor-
tations, etc. And the SWP certainly did
its best to prove that it was peaceful,
legal, agreed with the "philosophy
underlying the United States Constitu-
tion," didn't consider the Russian
Revolution a model, and so on (see
"Reformism on Trial," WV No. 286, 3I
July 1981). But the SWP's quaint faith
in the Bill of Rights notwithstanding,
the courts are after all part of the
bourgeois state and that state has an
interest in keeping tabs (illegally and
otherwise) on potential threats to
capitalist class rule. Of course with
regard to the "checks and balances"
SWP, any perception of a threat from
that quarter is wildly exaggerated, to put
it mildly. But cops are cops and they
tend to see anything to the left of the
Republican Party as necessarily a tool
of the International Communist
Conspiracy.
Regardless of the outcome, we all
lose. If the decision goes against the
SWP, it will legally sanctify the tram-
pling of leftists' civil rights both past and
future. Even if the SWP wins (which will
mean years more in court on appeal),
the SWP will have bought itself a
reversible exemption from the most
outrageous kinds of government perse-
cution at the expense of other left
groups, particularly some of its"expelled
ex-comrades.
The long and short of it is that the
SWP membership has been set up by the
Barnes clique. The "Watersuit" was
supposed to bring a badge of approval
from the state (i.e., no' more informers,
break-ins, poison-pen letters), a cool
$40 million and put the SWP's name in
lights as the "socialist" David which
conquered the FBI Goliath. To that end,
every vestige of elementary socialist
norms was sacrified: financial records,
of the Revolutionary Tendency, fore-
runner of the Spartacist League-the
SWP has moved ever rightward: tailing
the now defunct black nationalist
movement and especially the most right-
wing, anti-Semitic "cultural national-
ists"; union-busting "community con-
trol" and "affirmative action" schemes;
calling on the racist cops to defend black
schoolchildren; and now, liquidation-
ism towards a pro-capitalist black
"party."
The Revolutionary Tendency which
opposed the destruction of the revolu-
tionary program of the SWP in the early
1960s stood for revolutionary integra-
tionism, against the SWP's perspective
of a de facto division of labor between
itself and the nationalists: a black
nationalist party for blacks, the SWP
for whites. Neither the nationalists nor
the SWP have anything to offer black
people. Those who want to fight for
black freedom should look to the
Spartacist League:
"The struggle to win black activists to a
proletarian perspective is intimately
linked to the fight for a new, multiracial
class-struggle leadership of organized
labor which can transform the trade
unions into a key weapon in the battle
against racial oppression. Such a
leadership must break the grip of the
Democratic Party upon both organized
labor and the black masses through the
fight for working-class political inde-
pendence. As black workers, the most
combative elements within the U.S.
working class, are won to the cause and
party of proletarian revolution, they
will be in the front ranks of this class-
struggle leadership. And it will be these
black proletarians who will write the
finest pages of 'black history' -the
struggle to smash racist, imperialist
America and open the road to real
freedom for all mankind." [1978]
-Marxist Bulletin No. 5-R,
"What Strategy for Black
Liberation?"
Houston
Box 26474
Houston. TX 77207
Los Angeles
Box 29574
Los Feliz Station
Los Angeles. CA 90029
(213) 663-1216
Madison
co SYL
Box 2074
Madison. WI 53701
(608) 255-2342
New York
Box 444
Canal Street Station
New York. NY 10013
(212) 267-1025
San Francisco
Box 5712
San FranCISco. CA 94101
(4151 863-6963
Vancouver
Box 26, Station A
Vancouver. B,C V6C 2L8
(604) 681-2422
-16 September 1981
U.S. Trotskyism is in turmoil.
The Socialist Workers Party (SWP), the
largest Trotskyist organization in the U. s. ,
has recently taken significant steps away
from classical Trotskyism in its international
perspective.
In addition, the sWP's major domestic
strategy-"tum toward industry" in which
the majority of SWP members got industrial
jobs--appears to have had little success. In
several instances, it apparently was counter-
productive.
In other signs of upheaval in the SWP,
membership has declined by 25% in the last
three years, the number of SWP offices is al-
so down by about- 25%, and sales of its
newspaper, The Militant, have dropped off.
Peter Camejo, one of the top leaders in the
SWP and its presidential candidate in 1976,
resigned from the party shortly before the
SWP's national convention in August. The
SWP has given no reason for his resignation
The struggles over international line aJj
erupted in ....-------.._I
''11
Socialist Workers Party:
Internal turmoil
onthe left
exclusions. The SWP has reaped its
deserved harvest-at the instigation of
the wife of a Democratic Party pol, the
Pittsburgh chapter has expelled three
SWPers.
But what's an expulsion between
friends? The Barnesites are apparently
convinced that if they are only a bit
more servile, they can get back in the
good graces of the NBIPP hustlers. So
the SWP continues to make a big deal
out of the draft charter of the NBIPP,
which contains some anti-capitalist
verbiage. Well, the Shanghai Chamber
of Commerce, in terror of the Chinese
revolution, in 1926 passed a resolution
for the dictatorship of the proletariat
and for world revolution.
The black question is strategic-if the
racial divisions between black and'white
workers are not overcome in class
struggle, there will be no American
socialist revolution. The key is the
construction of a multi-racial revolu-
tionary vanguard party, something the
SWP gave up long ago. From the SWP's
abstentionist course in the early 1960s-
the refusal to involve itself in the mass
civil rights struggles taking place in the
South, one of the issues which led to the
bureaucratic expulsion from the SWP
Stallnold Guardian gloats over
SWP's hemorrhaging.
Democratic Party to come back in and
throw a few pork barrels their way. The
SWP's orientation to this formation is
so craven that Andrew Pulley supported
an NBIPP loyalty clause for political

, _ "
Detroit
Box 32717
Detroit, MI 48232
(313) 961-1680
Champaign
co SYL
PO Box 2009
Champaign. IL 61820
(217) 384-7793
Chicago
Box 6441. Main PO
Chicago, IL 60680
(3121 427-0003
Toronto
Box 7198. Station A
Toronto Ontario M5W 1X8
(416) 593-4138
National Office
Box 1377, GPO
New York. NY 10116
(212) 732-7860
Amherst
co SYL
PO Box 176
Amherst. MA 01004
(4131 546-9906
Ann Arbor
co SYL
POBox 8364
Ann Arbor, MI 48107
(3131662-2339
Berkeley/Oakland
PO Box 32552
Oakland. CA 94604
(4151835-1535
Boston
Box 840, Central Station
Cambridge. MA 02139
(617) 492-3928
The SWP dismisses the Spartacist
League strategy of labor/black mobili-
zations to smash the fascist threat as
"ultra-left," and when cornered the most
Barnes & Co. can say is that things have
changed since 1939. They sure have-
the SWP was then a revolutionary party
as opposed to the wretched reformist
organization of today.
The SWP has blithely abstained from
Spartacist-initiated mobilizations of
workers, minorities, students and left-
ists against fascist provocations and has
disappeared their very existence in the
Militant. The latest such case was the 16
July Militant's account of "Gay Pride
Day," June 27:
"In Chicago, the Nazis organized a
counter action against the gay pride
march there. However, the two dozen
Nazis that did show lip left before the
30,000 people in the parade got there."
To get the truth, you need merely insert
between the two sentences the fact that
over 3,000 militant protesters confront-
ed the Nazis and shouted them down.
That mobilization was initiated and
built by the Spartacist League along
with union officials, community spokes-
men and many others who understand
what the Nazis are about infinitely
better than the SWP.
One would think that any member of
a nominally socialist organization
would have a gut impulse to fight the
KKK/Nazis. There must be a few such
people left in the SWP and we'd like to
find them before they give up on
"socialism." The only thing'the SWP
offers blacks is the National Black
Independent Political Party (NBIPP),
essentially a rest home for black
unelected officials waiting for the
bombing, union busting and genocide.
Blacks head the list of the fascists'
targets but the SWP is on the list too:
SWP offices in Southern and South-
western cities have been shot at and in
one case a bomb was placed.
In San Diego, Klan ringleader Tom
Metzger ran on the Democratic Party
ticket for Congress in 1980. Not only did
SWP candidate Mark Friedman partici-
pate in a televised debate with the
"Grand Dragon," but the 10 October
1980 Militant boasted about it. (Even
the Republican incumbent refused to
take part-for which he was attacked by
the SWP!) Perhaps the SWP should put
an article in Perspectiva Mundial
boasting about their polite debate with
the nightriding Klan which led armed
patrols searching for "illegal aliens" at
the Mexican border.
There is nothing in common with the
SWP of the 1930s but the name. The 3
March 1939 Socialist Appeal (forerun-
ner of the Militant) stated:
"The workers who spend all their time
and energy in the abstract discussion of
the Nazis' 'democratic rights' ... will end
their discussion under a Fascist club in a
concentration camp. . . . The self-
preservation of the working class
demands that it cut through all abstract
chatter and smash the Fascist gangs by
decisive and relentless action."
23 JULY 1982
11
WfJliNEIiS "NfitJlllilJ
Welcome to the SWP 1982 Conference:
Barnesite SWP on the
Road to Nowhere
Jack
Barnes
111111111111111

t
SWP 1939
WV Photo
"talking socialism" which is guaranteed
to produce victimizations of SWPers
foolish enough to try it. These creative
Barnesite contributions only compound
the SWP's underlying central problem:
the social-democratic niche the SWP
wants to occupy is already being filled
by Michael Harrington's much larger
organization, which has a growing
membership, consistent social-
democratic politics and-what really
matters to reformists-real friends in
the trade-union bureaucracy.
The politically overlapping opposi-
tions (Weinstein/Henderson, Breitman,
Lovell/Bloom) which have erupted
inside the SWP have, as might be
expected, a right-wing thrust despite a
good deal of leftist-sounding rhetoric
from some of their components about
the class nature of the Nicaraguan state
and / or ritual genuflections in the
direction of the "Fourth International."
The tipoff is the appetite pervasive in
their documents for becoming even
more at one than Barnes with Solidar-
nose, Polish company unlonrnnhe CIA
and Western bankers. Significant layers
of the SWP, most notably among the
party old-timers, perceived that the
emergence of an "anti-Stalinist" move-
ment in Eastern Europe could present a
wonderful opportunity to march in step
with the American union bureaucrats in
their work for "free trade unions." This
layer of the party has also been the most
articulate advocates of missionary-
position opportunism in the unions as
against the Barnesites' grotesque, or-
ganizationally adventurist policy of
talking reformism.
It's hard for outsiders to tet! how
much the disaffection of older party
members from the narrow. increasingly
cult-like Barnes clique is political and
how much is a direct defensive response
to the latest "age purge." The nastiness
of the SWP's internal life is, of course.
nothing new, and it's not as if Barnes did
not already have iron control of his
continued on page 10
SWP Today
THE MILITANT -19 September
,oc,.,," 'LB. , "H' ",."" o' 'k'
Socialist vs. Klan-Democlat
Militant/Holbrook Mahn
The Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. Congress in California's
FortyThird District, Mark Friedman, his Democratic Party
opponent, Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon Thomas Metzger, on NBC's "Speak
Up America" show September 5.

Reformist SWP boasts of providing platform for terrorist Klan's Tom Metzger.
what may, revealing bits of outright
defeatism come creeping through, be-
ginning with Cindy Jaquith's report on
the party convention, where the reporter
on women sweepingly declared: "Wom-
en as well as the working class are going
to suffer some defeats, probably some
big ones, in the coming period" ("How
Can Labor Answer the Reagan Offen-
sive?" Militant, 4 September 1981).
Meanwhile the social situation in this
country remains deeply contradictory
and potentially enormously explosive.
The economic crisis, the desperate
condition of the black masses, the
discrediting of Jimmy Carter's Demo-
crats, the widespread fear of war make
for real revolutionary opportunities as
well as sobering dangers. The fact that at
the AFL-CIO march in Washington last
September 19 a socialist organization
could sell over 8,000 copies of its paper
(we're talking, of course, about Workers
Vanguard) is one small, graphic indica-
tion that Reagan reaction means not a
return to the 1950s when "politics" was a
dirty word but an openness to socialist
ideas among elements of the working
class, especially its black component.
But the SWP is shrinking and Waters,
long known for her "Mary-Alice in
Wonderland" org reports, thinks it's
going to go on like that. So does
everyone else, apparently. The SWP's
difficulties and the concomitant out-
break of internal wrangling have been
the subject of repeated comment in the
rad-lib Guardian and elsewhere. At
bottom the problem for the SWP is that
Barnes' version of social-democratic
reformism incorporates good-sized
chunks of political eccentricity (e.g.,
Castroism, necessarily a problem for an
anti-Soviet party; maintwance of the
infatuation with Khomeini long after
the bulk of his apologists on the left
backed away in embarrassment; the
present orientation to the "working
farmer"; the Grenadian road to "social-
ism" as the model for American blacks).
On a par is a trade-union policy of
..
practice reformism unhindered by the
capitalist state, had barely noticed the
election of Ronald Reagan, the formali-
zation of a significant shift to the right
on the terrain of bourgeois politics. A
telling indicator of this fatuousness was
the shock when light dawned: Barnes'
keynote speech to the last SWP national
convention centered on a hand-
wringing exposition on the Reagan
budget which Barnes considered noth-
ing less than "sensational" ("The Rea-
gan Offensive at Home and Abroad,"
Party Organizer Vol. 5, No.3, Septem-
ber 1981). How isolated must the Barnes
clique be from the everyday concerns of
the American masses-by August 1981
it was hardly news to the "average"
black or white worker in this country
that bad things were going down and
appropriate responses included not only
anger but also simple fear.
The "corrective" introduced at the
1981 convention was a flip-flop into
panic and a defeatism so pronounced
that one must conclude the Barnesites'
views on the "nature of the period" are
determined solely by the precarious
internal state of the SWP. Even in the
cynical Militant, which is supposed to
push a "new radicalization" line come
Issued by the
SOClAlJST WORKERS PARTY (Fourth International)
116 l'ni\'ersity Place, New York (it):
..
WORKERS OF NE\V YORK!
StOl! the Fascists!
PICKET sqUARE
FEB. GP. !
The fascists are mobilizing at Madison Square Garden nighL
Hitlu's Gl:rman-American Bund gangsters, Pelley's Silver Shirt scum
and Coughlin's mob of labor haters have hurled a brazen challenge at
the workers of New York..
Wrapping themsehes in the cloak of patriotism and "Americanism".
the fascists prepare to spew their anti-labor and antiJewish poison
throughout :-lew York City.
These gangs have already gone too far. They must be stopped.
"'nat are you going to do to stop this murderous crew?
We must not let this filthy. creeping slime get a foothold in New York.
Gather in front of Square Garden by the thousands!
Be there at 6:00 P. M. sharp!
Let the fascists feel the anger and the might of the working dass-
Get out and picket!
Don't wait for the C'oncentration camps - Act now!
On to Square Gard..n :\"i;!bl!
Socialist Appeal
When
revolutionary
SWP mobilized
50,000 workers
ill i .. ;! streets of
New York
against the
fascists.
After what seems like eons of prom-
ises that "consistent whatever leads to
socialism," reams of resolutions pro-
claiming a "New Rise of the Whatever
Struggle" and a "turn" which was
supposed to bring in hundreds of
proletarian recruits to a "party of
industrial workers," sections of the
reformist Socialist Workers Party
(SWP) seem to have become aware that
the Barnes leadership is driving hard
and not slowly toward irrelevance. The
party has seemingly run out of "what-
evers" and, according to Mary-Alice
Waters, money and members as well.
Waters' report to the November 1981
National Committee plenum (Party
Organizer, Vol. 6, No. I, April 1982)
admitted a loss of 500 members (euphe-
mistically termed a "gradual decline in
the total membership of the party over
several years"). This and the concomit-
ant ballooning of red ink resulted in the
cutting of the full-time staff by about
one third so far; and as for the future,
Waters added: "we don't think we've
bottomed out in total membership."
The sterile and eccentric Barnes
clique, armed with the "socialist Water-
suit" which was supposed to bring the
SWP a special license to
12
23 JULY 1982